Best Books About Friendship for Kindergarten (Ages 5–6)

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Something shifts at five. In preschool, a friend is mostly whoever happened to be at the water table. In kindergarten your child walks into a room of twenty-five children who are all quietly working out who belongs with who, and nobody is standing over the process making it fair. That is why the friendship books that carried you through three and four suddenly feel thin. They answer "what is a friend", and your five-year-old has moved on to the harder question, which is what you do when the answer is nobody, at least not today.

So I have picked these for the problems rather than for the theme. Getting into a group that has already formed. Being on the wrong end of one child who has decided to make school hard. Putting something back together after it breaks. All of them are read-alouds a five or six year old can sit through, and all of them leave your child with something to do rather than something to feel.

One piece of research is worth knowing before you start, because it changes what you look for at pick-up. Jeffrey Parker and Steven Asher, writing in Developmental Psychology in 1993, found that being generally accepted by the class, having a best friend, and the quality of that friendship each mattered separately to how lonely a child felt. Plenty of children who were not especially popular had a close friend and were content. That study looked at older children, third to fifth grade rather than kindergarten, so hold it loosely at five. What it suggests is still useful: one real friendship is doing work that general popularity does not, so if your child has one person, that is not a consolation prize.

1. Sharing Silver: the one that tells a five-year-old what to actually do

Bandit is a dog who is always in trouble, and the story starts with him raiding a beehive and getting stung. Silver the Super Pup does not tell him off. He takes him around Friendship Forest so he can watch the pattern for himself. Angry Ann snaps at the other ants and the game breaks up. Greedy Gus sits on his cookies and ends up alone with them while everybody else swaps. Olivia the owl gives her music away and the whole forest gives back to her. That last one is the beat that lands hardest at five, because your child has just met the playground version of Gus and knows exactly who he is.

“You get what you give — and the more you give, the more you get.”

Sharing Silver: a superhero training story about sharing and giving, for ages 3–7. Best pick for kindergarten friendship because it turns making friends into something your child can act on at break time instead of something they have to wait for.

View Sharing Silver on Amazon

Most friendship books for this age describe what a good friend is like. A five-year-old standing at the edge of a football game does not need a description, they need a first move, and Sharing Silver gives them one: go first. Offer the thing, take the smaller half, ask the person sitting on their own. It is small enough that a child can do it without being brave, and it works often enough that they notice the result themselves, which is the part no adult can do for them. The other reason it holds up in kindergarten is Bandit. He is never the villain, just a dog who does unkind things and then learns something, so it reads gently in the week your own child has been the one causing trouble. You can read a sample of Sharing Silver first, and if the sticking point is that nobody is playing with them at all, what to do when your child has no friends goes further into that.

2. Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes

Chrysanthemum loves her name until the day she starts school and the other girls discover it is the name of a flower and that it has thirteen letters. She wilts a little more each day, and it is not resolved by an adult telling anybody off. It turns when the music teacher, who the class already worships, mentions her own name is Delphinium. This is the book for the child who has come home quiet about something somebody said, and it is honest about the fact that being teased for a thing you cannot change is horrible. It also shows the teasers changing their minds, which matters if your child is on the other side of it. View Chrysanthemum on Amazon →

3. Stick and Stone by Beth Ferry

Stick is alone, Stone is alone, and a pinecone is picking on Stone until Stick steps in. Then a hurricane blows Stick away and Stone has to go and get him back. It rhymes, it is short, and it is the lightest book on this page, which is why it works on a school night when nobody has the stamina for anything heavier. What it does well is show that friendships often start with one person doing one thing rather than with a conversation. Best for the child who wants a friend and has no idea what the opening move is. It is graded preschool to third grade, so it looks young on paper, and it was still the book my five-year-old asked for more often than the ones written for his age. View Stick and Stone on Amazon →

4. Enemy Pie by Derek Munson

A boy has one enemy, Jeremy Ross, so his dad offers to bake enemy pie. The catch is that it only works if you spend a whole day being nice to the enemy first. You can see the ending coming as an adult and your child will not, which is the pleasure of it. Nothing on this list handles the kindergarten enemy better, and the enemy is usually real: one specific child who took a place at the table or said something at break. It is graded kindergarten to third grade, so it sits at the top of this age band and is best read as a read-aloud rather than left for them. View Enemy Pie on Amazon →

5. The Recess Queen by Alexis O'Neill

Mean Jean runs the playground and nobody swings, kicks or bounces until she says so. Then a small new girl called Katie Sue turns up, does not know the rules, and asks Mean Jean to jump rope with her. The bounce of the language is what makes it work aloud, and children who will not sit through a quieter book will sit through this one. It is also the most useful book here on the thing kindergarteners rarely think of, which is that the child who is being difficult on the playground might join in if somebody asks. If the situation at your school has gone past bossiness, helping a child who is being bullied is the more practical read. View The Recess Queen on Amazon →

6. The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig

Brian is not picked on. He is simply not noticed, and the illustrations show it by drawing him in grey while everybody around him is in colour. Colour arrives when a new boy joins the class and Brian does one small thing for him. Every parent whose child is quiet at school should read this once. It captures a thing that is hard to raise with a teacher, because nothing is happening, and that is the problem. Reading age is given as 5 to 8, so it is the most mature book on this page and lands better at the end of the kindergarten year than the start. View The Invisible Boy on Amazon →

7. Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson

Maya is new, her clothes are wrong, and Chloe turns away from her every time she tries. Then Maya moves away, the chance is gone, and Chloe is left with it. This is the only book here that does not resolve, and that is deliberate on Woodson's part. It is a lot for a five-year-old, so read it yourself first and decide. A child at the older end of this band can carry it, and it does something no tidy story does. It makes the missed chance land. Reach for it when your own child has been the one turning away, not when they are the one being left out. View Each Kindness on Amazon →

How to choose between them

Pick by the problem rather than by the theme. If your child cannot get into a group, start with Sharing Silver and Stick and Stone, because both are about the first move. If one particular child is making school hard, it is Enemy Pie and The Recess Queen. If somebody said something about your child that stuck, it is Chrysanthemum. If they are quiet and drifting at the edges, it is The Invisible Boy. And if your child has been the one doing the excluding, Each Kindness is the one that will stay with them.

Read it for the story the first time and skip the discussion. Five-year-olds close down the moment a book becomes a lesson, and you can watch it happen. On a second reading, stop where somebody could have done something differently and ask what they would have done, then take whatever answer you get without correcting it. The part that changes behaviour comes later anyway, on an ordinary afternoon, when you name it as it happens: "You asked her to play when she was on her own. That's the Silver thing." One sentence like that does more than a week of reading.

If your child is younger, the preschool friendship list is the right rung, and there is a wider ages 3–7 selection at best picture books about friendship. When the specific problem is starting from scratch in a new class, best books about making friends is more targeted, and the kindergarten kindness list is the companion to this one. For things to do after the story, playdate ideas that build friendship skills is where the practice actually happens.