Best Books About Respect for Kindergarten

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Kindergarten is the year respect stops being a household matter and becomes a public one. At home your child knew the rules and mostly knew who was enforcing them. Now there are twenty-odd other five year olds, one adult, a carpet with assigned spots, and a queue for everything. Most of what gets reported to you as rudeness in the first term is not rudeness. It is a child who has not yet worked out that the room has rules of its own.

The timing helps you, though. Kindergarten sits right on top of a shift psychologists call theory of mind: somewhere around four or five, most children become reliably able to work out that somebody else can think or believe something different from what they think and believe. Children get there at their own pace and the research is about averages rather than birthdays. But it is the reason a five year old can suddenly understand that the girl they laughed at felt bad, when a three year old genuinely could not. Respect needs that machinery, and your child has just been issued it.

What they have not been issued is the vocabulary. That is what these six do. If you want the broader list across ages, our children's books about respect covers older children too, and this page is the kindergarten rung of it.

1. Sharing Silver — best for turning respect into a rule a five year old can use

Silver the Super Pup meets Bandit, a dog who takes things. Nobody tells Bandit off. Instead he watches what happens to the animals who give, through Olivia's music and Benny's waterwheel and a forest that keeps handing back what it gets, until he works out the pattern for himself. That structure matters at five, because a kindergartener who feels accused stops listening, and half the respect conversations parents attempt this year start with an accusation.

It is number one because it does the translation. Respect, to a five year old, is a word adults say in a particular tone. Sharing Silver turns it into cause and effect, which is a thing children this age understand very well from every other part of their lives. Written for ages three to seven, so a kindergartener sits comfortably in the middle, and the superhero-training frame means the whole thing lands as training rather than telling off. Read it the week before school starts if you can.

“The world is like a mirror. It reflects back what you give.”

Sharing Silver is a superhero training story about sharing and giving, written for ages 3 to 7. The one that makes respect concrete enough for a five year old to act on.

View Sharing Silver on Amazon

You can read a sample of Sharing Silver first if you want to hear the voice before you buy.

2. Chrysanthemum — by Kevin Henkes

Chrysanthemum loves her name until she starts school, where the other mice discover it is long and it is a flower and both of those are apparently hilarious. What Henkes gets right is that the teasing is casual. Victoria is not a monster, she is a child who found something funny and did not think about the other end of it, which is exactly the kind of disrespect that happens in a kindergarten classroom every day. It resolves through a teacher the children admire rather than through a telling off, and your child will spot the mechanism. Greenwillow Books, thirty-two pages, first published September 1991 and still on classroom shelves for a reason. Bring it out when somebody's name, packed lunch or shoes have become the joke. View Chrysanthemum on Amazon →

3. David Goes to School — by David Shannon

David breaks every rule the room has. He shouts out, he runs in the hall, he chews with his mouth open, he ignores the teacher, and the text is almost entirely the exasperated things adults say back. It is very funny, and the funniness is doing the work. A child who recognises themselves in David laughs instead of bracing for a lecture, so the rules go in sideways. It also ends well rather than punitively, which is the part that stops it being a shaming book. The Blue Sky Press hardcover, thirty-two pages, published August 1999. Sequel to No, David!, and the one to reach for when the note from the teacher is about behaviour on the carpet. View David Goes to School on Amazon →

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

Everybody carries an invisible bucket, and everything you do either fills somebody's or empties it. That is the whole idea, and it is on this list because of what it does to a household's language rather than what it does in a single reading. Once a five year old has the phrase, you stop saying "be respectful" and start asking whether that filled his bucket or dipped into it, and a child can answer that question honestly about their own behaviour in a way they cannot answer a question about respect. Plenty of primary schools already run on this vocabulary, so check whether your child's does before you buy, because arriving with it already installed is a real advantage. Illustrated by David Messing, Bucket Fillers Press, thirty-two pages. View Have You Filled a Bucket Today? on Amazon →

5. Last Stop on Market Street — by Matt de la Peña

CJ and his nana ride the bus across town after church, and CJ spends most of the journey asking why they do not have a car and why he does not have what other children have. Nana answers every complaint by pointing at something worth seeing instead, and the ride ends somewhere CJ did not expect. This is the one about respecting people whose lives look nothing like your own, and it manages it without a lesson attached, which is rare. Christian Robinson's collage illustrations are half the argument. It won the Newbery Medal in 2016 and took a Caldecott Honor and a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor alongside it, which is an unusual sweep for a picture book. G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, thirty-two pages, January 2015. It is a quiet book and it wants a quiet moment. View Last Stop on Market Street on Amazon →

6. The Recess Queen — by Alexis O'Neill

Mean Jean runs the playground and nobody swings, kicks or bounces until she says so. Then Katie Sue arrives, too new to know the rules, and does the one thing nobody has tried: she asks Jean to play. The rhyme is bouncy enough that children memorise chunks of it, and Laura Huliska-Beith's illustrations are loud in the best way. What makes it a respect book rather than a bullying book is that Jean is not defeated, she is included, and a five year old can see that the move which fixed it was available to any of the children the whole time. Scholastic Press, thirty-two pages, February 2002. View The Recess Queen on Amazon →

How to choose one, and what to do after you close it

Match the book to the thing that is actually happening. If your child is on the receiving end of the teasing, that is Chrysanthemum. If your child is the one doing it, that is also Chrysanthemum, read without comment. Trouble on the carpet is David Goes to School. Trouble at break is The Recess Queen. And if nothing in particular is wrong and you simply want the idea in the house before it is needed, start with Sharing Silver and the bucket book, in that order.

Then keep the conversation off your child. Five year olds will happily analyse Mean Jean's behaviour at length and go completely silent the second the question turns to them, so ask about the character and let them make the connection privately, which they will. One question is enough. Why did Katie Sue ask her to play. What could Victoria have said instead. And say the phrase yourself in front of them for a fortnight, because at this age children copy the words adults use far more reliably than they follow the instructions adults give.

For the wider picture see our guide to raising a kind, sharing friend, how to teach kids kindness for the practical side, and books about following directions if listening rather than respect is the real battle. The kindergarten friendship list is the neighbouring rung.