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Short answer: buy The Rabbit Listened first. It is the only book here that hands a preschooler a thing to actually do when somebody is upset. If your child cannot yet name feelings at all, start with In My Heart. If they bustle about trying to fix everybody's mood, Grumpy Monkey. If they have noticed perfectly well and carry on grabbing anyway, that is a different problem and Sharing Silver is the one. For a four or five-year-old who asks what being kind even means, Be Kind. For a phrase the whole house can use, Fill a Bucket.
I went looking for these the week our youngest stood over a crying friend at playgroup and laughed. Not cruelly. She laughed the way you laugh at something surprising, then wandered off to the sand tray. I remember the hot feeling of other parents watching and thinking I had somehow raised a child with a missing part.
She had not. That is more or less the standard three-year-old response, and the fix is much smaller and more practical than it looks from where I was standing.
Why this is a vocabulary problem, not a character problem
The feeling-with half of empathy shows up extremely early. In a study published in Developmental Psychology in 1992, Carolyn Zahn-Waxler, Marian Radke-Yarrow, Elizabeth Wagner and Michael Chapman watched how children in their second year responded to distress, both distress they had caused and distress they only witnessed. Helping, sharing and comforting turned up somewhere between one and two years old, and grew in both frequency and variety across that year. Toddlers patted people. They fetched things. They tried.
The other half takes longer. Working out that another person knows something different from what you know, and feels something different from what you feel, is the piece researchers test with false-belief tasks, and children typically start passing those somewhere around four or five. So the three-year-old standing over a crying friend is usually not short of feeling. They are short of two things: the word for what they are looking at, and a move.
Which is why the order of this list is not the order of the prettiest books. It is the order of how quickly each one hands over a word or a move.
1. The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld
Taylor builds something tall and it comes down. Then the animals arrive, one at a time, each certain they have the answer. The chicken wants to talk it through. The bear says get angry. The elephant says remember it, the hyena says laugh, the ostrich says hide. Taylor sends them all away. Then the rabbit comes, says nothing at all, and edges closer until Taylor is ready to talk.
This is first because it is the only book on the list that a preschooler can copy by Tuesday. Everything else here teaches a child something about feelings. This one teaches them a position for their body: go and sit next to the person. Ours now does the rabbit on purpose, badly and far too close, and it is still better than the laugh. Dial Books, 2018, 40 pages, and Amazon lists the reading age as 2 and up, which is right. The Rabbit Listened on Amazon.
2. In My Heart: A Book of Feelings by Jo Witek, illustrated by Christine Roussey
A die-cut heart runs through every spread, and each page takes one feeling and puts it somewhere in the body. Happiness is light. Sadness is heavy. Anger has a shape and a temperature. There is no story and no problem to solve, which is the point.
Second, because of the order things have to happen in. A child who cannot say "sad" about themselves has nothing to reach for when they see it on somebody else's face. This is the book that builds the shortlist of words, and it reads in about three minutes, so you can do it nightly without resentment. Abrams Appleseed, 2014, 30 pages, and the publisher puts it at 2 to 4, so it is the one to get in early rather than at five. In My Heart on Amazon.
3. Grumpy Monkey by Suzanne Lang, illustrated by Max Lang
Jim is in a foul mood on a beautiful day and cannot say why. His friends line up with suggestions, all of them cheerful and all of them useless, and the pile of advice eventually tips him into a proper meltdown. What the book settles on is that he might just need a day to feel grumpy.
Third, and buy it for a specific child: the one who hovers over an upset sibling with a biscuit and a running commentary and will not let it go. Preschoolers are often taught that a sad face is a problem to be fixed, and then they get busy and make it worse. This is the counterweight, and it is genuinely funny, so nobody notices they are being taught. Jim is a chimpanzee, incidentally, title notwithstanding. Random House Studio, 2018, 32 pages, reading age 2 to 5. Grumpy Monkey on Amazon.
4. Sharing Silver: for the child who has noticed and does it anyway
Bandit the dog steals a chunk of honey from a beehive, gets stung for it, and Silver the Super Pup walks him round Friendship Forest to watch what everybody else's giving sets off. Olivia the owl's choir. Benny the beaver's waterwheel, which makes pools for the fish and good soil for the plants. Larry the leprechaun hiding coins under mushrooms for the fox cubs. By the end Bandit gives the bee back a toy, and gets honey.
“The world is like a mirror. It reflects back what you give.”
Sharing Silver: a superhero training story about sharing and giving, for ages 3–7.
View Sharing Silver on AmazonHere is where it fits. This is not a perspective-taking book. Nobody in it stops to imagine how the bee feels. What it teaches is the consequence side, the mirror: how you treat others is how you get treated back. That is reciprocity rather than empathy, and the three books above do the noticing job better for a three-year-old. Where it earns its place is the other child, the one who has noticed the crying perfectly well and grabs the toy regardless. Explaining feelings to that child goes nowhere. Showing them an entire forest where the generous animals have helpers everywhere and Greedy Gus sits alone with his cookies does land, because it is self-interest pointed somewhere useful. It is also ages 3 to 7 rather than 3 to 5, so at three you are reading the pictures and the one-line rules. You can read the opening pages free, or get the paperback on Amazon.
5. Be Kind by Pat Zietlow Miller, illustrated by Jen Hill
Tanisha spills grape juice down her new dress. A classmate wants to make her feel better and cannot work out how, and the rest of the book is that child turning the question over: what does being kind actually mean here? Asking the new girl to play. Saying someone's name properly. Standing up for a person who is being picked on.
Fifth because it is the most thoughtful book here and the least immediate. The whole thing happens inside a child's head, which is wonderful at five and roughly invisible at three. If your preschooler is at the older end and has started asking the why questions about other people, this is the one that rewards it. Roaring Brook Press, 2018, 32 pages, reading age 3 to 6. Be Kind on Amazon.
6. Fill a Bucket by Carol McCloud and Katherine Martin, illustrated by David Messing
Everybody carries an invisible bucket. Kind words and kind acts fill it, your own included; unkind ones empty it. That is the whole book, done in 24 pages for the youngest readers, and it is the little sibling of the better-known Have You Filled a Bucket Today?
Last, and not because it is bad. It is the closest thing here to a lesson, and a metaphor only works if the adults keep using it out loud for weeks. Do that, and you get something the other five cannot give you: a family phrase that works in the moment, at the door, with your coat half on. "Did that fill her bucket or empty it?" is a question a four-year-old can answer honestly about themselves. Bucket Fillers Press, this edition 2018, reading age 3 to 6. Fill a Bucket on Amazon.
How to pick one
Go by what your child does when somebody else is upset, not by what you wish they did. Nothing, or a laugh, or a blank look: The Rabbit Listened, because the gap is a move. No words for feelings at all, their own included: In My Heart. Fusses and fixes and will not leave the person alone: Grumpy Monkey. Sees the crying, understands the crying, takes the toy anyway: Sharing Silver. Asks what kind means: Be Kind. Needs the whole family saying the same sentence by Friday: Fill a Bucket.
Then the part the book cannot do. Narrate other people's faces out loud for a fortnight, in the supermarket, in the car park, over breakfast. "He is crying because his ice cream went on the ground. He looks sad." No question at the end, no moral, no asking how they would feel. You are just naming it until the word arrives before the laugh does. That is the entire intervention, and it is free.
If your child is nearer six or seven, the full empathy list has the longer books that start working at that age, and how to teach a child empathy covers the everyday version with no books in it at all. For the same age band and the kindness problem instead, there is the preschool kindness list.