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

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Kindergarten changes the question. A three-year-old is learning to hand a toy over to one other child while a grown-up watches. A five-year-old is doing something far harder: working out, in a room of twenty-five, whether to sit beside the child nobody is sitting beside, and what to do when a friend says the seat is taken. Nobody is standing there to prompt them. Whatever rule they carry in is the one they use.

That is why the books that suit this age look different from board books about sharing. They run longer, they involve a group rather than a pair, and the best of them let a child get it wrong before they get it right. Two of the ones below do not tie up neatly on the last page, which is uncomfortable and is exactly the point.

It is also worth knowing that this age band is where schools deliberately start teaching kindness, and there is decent evidence behind that choice. A well-known meta-analysis led by Joseph Durlak, published in Child Development in 2011, pooled 213 school-based social and emotional learning programmes covering more than 270,000 students from kindergarten upwards, and found improved social skills and behaviour alongside a gain in academic results. A picture book at bedtime is a far smaller thing than a school programme, so do not expect one story to do that work. What a story does give your child is the words and the example, ready for the moment it happens.

1. Sharing Silver: the one that gives a five-year-old a rule to carry into class

Bandit is a dog who is always up to something, and the book opens with him raiding a beehive and getting stung for it. Silver the Super Pup does not tell him off. He walks him round Friendship Forest and lets him watch the pattern instead. Angry Ann snaps at the other ants and the game breaks up. Greedy Gus hugs his bag of cookies and ends up with nothing while everyone else swaps. Olivia the owl gives her music away and the whole forest gives back. Then Silver hands him the line that Sharing Silver is built on.

“How you treat others is how you will be treated by others.”

Sharing Silver — a superhero training story about sharing and giving, for ages 3–7. Best pick for kindergarten because the lesson fits in one sentence a child can actually use in the moment.

View Sharing Silver on Amazon

What makes it land at five rather than three is that the rule is portable. A kindergartener cannot carry a three-page situation into school with them, but they can carry one sentence, and children this age love the fairness of it. Ours started using it on each other, which was both irritating and precisely the point. The other reason it works here: Bandit is never the villain of the story. He is a dog who does unkind things and then learns something, so it reads gently if your own child has been the one who was unkind that week. You can read a sample of Sharing Silver before you buy, and there are more ways to build the same habit in how to teach kids kindness.

2. Do Unto Otters by Laurie Keller

Mr Rabbit gets new neighbours. They are otters, he knows nothing about otters, and he is quietly panicking about whether they will get along. A wise owl gives him the golden rule and the rest of the book unpacks what that actually means: be friendly, say please, play fair, share, apologise. Amazon lists it at kindergarten grade level and you can see why teachers reach for it. It is loud, silly, packed with side jokes, and it covers a term's worth of classroom manners without once sounding like a telling-off. If you buy one book on this list for the start of the school year, buy this one. View Do Unto Otters on Amazon →

3. Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson

Chloe decides she will not be friends with Maya, the new girl in worn shoes, and the rest of the class follows her. Then Maya moves away and Chloe never gets to put it right. The ending stays broken. That is hard to read aloud, and it is the reason this book belongs at five or six rather than three: a kindergartener is old enough to sit with a regret and understand that some chances do not come round again. Read it yourself first, then read it slowly. View Each Kindness on Amazon →

4. Have You Filled a Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud

Everybody carries an invisible bucket. Kind words fill it, unkind ones dip into it, and dipping empties your own bucket as well. It is a plain image and it sticks fast. A lot of primary schools use the language, so there is a fair chance your child comes home already talking about filling and dipping, and having the book at home means the two match up. Useful for the child who is kind but does not yet notice the effect they have. View Have You Filled a Bucket Today? 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 tiny Katie Sue arrives, does not know the rules, and tries the one thing nobody has tried: she asks Jean to jump rope with her. The rhythm is brilliant read aloud and children this age get the joke long before the ending. Underneath, it makes a point worth a kindergartener hearing, which is that unkindness usually comes from being outside the game rather than from being bad. View The Recess Queen on Amazon →

6. Strictly No Elephants by Lisa Mantchev

A boy and his tiny pet elephant are turned away from the Pet Club, so they go and find another child who has been shut out and start a club where nobody gets turned away. Quiet, warm, and the best book here on the plain experience of being left out, which at five is what unkindness usually looks like. Good for the child who has been excluded and just as good for the one doing the excluding without quite realising. View Strictly No Elephants on Amazon →

7. Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña

CJ and his grandmother ride the bus across town after church, and CJ spends the trip asking why they do not have a car, why he does not have what his friends have. His nana keeps turning his questions round until he sees the people on the bus properly. It is the widest book on this list, because the kindness in it is not about a classmate but about noticing everybody. A lovely one to read when your child starts comparing themselves with the other children in class. View Last Stop on Market Street on Amazon →

How to read these so they stick

Read it once for the story, with no pausing to point out the lesson. Children this age shut down the second a book turns into a lecture, and you can watch it happen. On a later reading, stop at the moment where somebody could have done the kind thing and ask what your child would have done. Take whatever answer you get, including the honest ones. Then leave it.

The part that changes behaviour comes later, in an ordinary week, when you name it out loud as it happens. "You saw he had nobody to sit with and you went over. That's the thing we read about." That is what turns a story your child heard into something your child does. Repetition matters more than variety here, so three books read twenty times will do more than twenty books read once.

If your child is younger than this, the same books are mostly too long and the endings are too much, so start with the preschool kindness list instead, or the preschool sharing list if turns and toys are the real sticking point. Once they are six or seven and the trouble has moved from toys to who gets left out, the elementary kindness list is the next rung up. If you want the broader selection across ages 3–7, we keep one at children's books about kindness and a longer sharing-and-kindness round-up at best books about sharing and kindness. And if the problem is a particular child at school rather than kindness in general, the bullying list is the more useful one.