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

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Kindergarten moves the argument. A three-year-old who won't hand over a digger mostly wants the digger. A five-year-old wants the digger and has opinions about whether it is fair that somebody else has it, how long they had it for, and who had it yesterday. That is a different conversation, and it needs different books.

There is decent evidence that this is exactly when fairness arrives. Ernst Fehr, Helen Bernhard and Bettina Rockenbach ran a set of simple sharing games with children aged three to eight and published the results in Nature in 2008. At three and four, most of the children behaved selfishly. By seven and eight, most of them preferred to even out an unequal split, even when evening it out cost them something. Kindergarten sits in the middle of that change. So if you have been feeling behind because your five-year-old still clutches things, you are not late. You have arrived at the useful bit.

What that means for choosing a book: the ones that work now can run longer, can let a character be genuinely unfair before they work it out, and can be honest that sharing sometimes costs you the thing you wanted. A five-year-old can hold all three of those. A three-year-old mostly cannot.

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

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 lecture him. He walks him around Friendship Forest and lets him watch what happens. Greedy Gus the goat clutches a bag of cookies and snaps "Mine! All mine!" at anyone who comes near, and later, when the other animals go past with honey and strawberries and chestnuts, they walk straight by him. He is left chewing crumbs on his own. Olivia the owl gives her music away and the whole forest gives back. Then Silver hands Bandit the line the whole of Sharing Silver is built on.

“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 because the lesson is one sentence long, which is about as much as a child can carry across a classroom.

View Sharing Silver on Amazon

Why it lands at five rather than three: the rule travels. A kindergartener cannot carry a three-page situation into school, but they can carry one sentence, and children this age love how tidy it is. Ours started using it on each other within a week, which was both irritating and precisely the point. It also matters that Bandit is never the villain. He is a dog who does selfish things, watches what they cost him, and changes his mind. That reads gently if your own child has been the one who wouldn't share that week, which at five they regularly will be. You can read a sample of Sharing Silver before you buy, and the everyday version of the same habit is in ways to teach your child to share.

2. It's Mine! by Leo Lionni

Three frogs share an island and spend every page bickering over it. It's mine, it's mine, it's mine. Then a storm floods the island, they end up crowded together on the last rock in the rain, and the arguing simply stops being worth it. Lionni does not moralise for a second, which is why it works: the frogs are not told to share, they discover that being three separate owners of a shrinking rock is worse than being three frogs on it together. This is the best book on the list for the child whose sticking point is ownership rather than kindness. View It's Mine! on Amazon →

3. Should I Share My Ice Cream? by Mo Willems

Gerald the elephant has an ice cream. Piggie is not there. Should he share it? He thinks about it, at length, out loud, while the ice cream quietly melts. It is very funny and it is also the most honest book here about what sharing actually feels like from the inside, which is agonising. Elephant and Piggie books are pitched at children just starting to read for themselves, so this one doubles as an early reader your kindergartener may be able to attempt with you. Best for the child who does share, eventually, after a long and visible internal struggle. View Should I Share My Ice Cream? on Amazon →

4. The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister

The most beautiful fish in the ocean has shimmering scales and no friends, because he will not give a single scale away. He hands one over, then another, and finds he would rather have the company. Some parents find the message a bit blunt, and the criticism is fair, so read it as a starting point rather than the last word. What it has going for it at this age is that the foil scales genuinely stop children in their tracks, and a book they want to hold is a book you get to read fifteen times. Buy the full picture book rather than the board book edition, which is cut down for toddlers. View The Rainbow Fish on Amazon →

5. Do Unto Otters by Laurie Keller

Mr Rabbit's new neighbours are otters. He knows nothing about otters and is quietly panicking about whether they will get along, until a wise owl gives him the golden rule. The rest of the book unpacks what that means in practice: play fair, take turns, share, apologise, say please. It is loud, silly and stuffed with side jokes, and it covers a whole term of classroom behaviour without once sounding like a telling-off. This is the one to buy if the sharing problem is really a getting-along-in-a-group problem. View Do Unto Otters on Amazon →

6. The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

A tree gives a boy her apples, then her branches, then her trunk, and is happy. It is the odd one out here and I have included it on purpose. Plenty of adults argue about whether it is a beautiful book about love or a troubling one about a taker, and a five-year-old will not settle that argument. What they will do is notice that the boy never says thank you. That noticing is worth more than a tidy lesson, and it makes this the one book on the list that gives you something to actually talk about afterwards. Read it when your child is ready to disagree with a book. View The Giving Tree on Amazon →

How to read these so they stick

Read it once for the story. No pausing to point out the lesson, no "and what should the frog have done?" Children this age can smell a lesson coming and you can watch them switch off. On a second or third reading, stop once at the moment where somebody could have shared and didn't, and ask what your child would have done. Take whatever answer you get, including the honest ones, and leave it there.

The bit that actually changes behaviour comes later, on an ordinary Tuesday, when you name it out loud as it happens. "You let her go first on the swing and you didn't have to. That's the thing we read about." That is what turns a story your child heard into something your child does. Repetition beats variety here, so three books read twenty times will do more than twenty books read once.

One thing worth expecting: plenty of parents find their five-year-old shares generously at school and not at all with a sibling. If that is your house, it is common enough that I would not read it as proof the lesson has not landed. Home is where children are tired, off duty, and arguing with someone whose place is already secure, and brothers and sisters fight over possessions in a way classmates mostly do not. Treat the school version as evidence they can do it, then work on the home version as its own separate problem. Sibling rivalry help is the more useful page for that.

If your child is younger than this, most of these run long and the preschool sharing list is the better fit, or the toddler list below that. If the fight is specifically about whose turn it is, the taking-turns list is more targeted, and if it is kindness in general rather than possessions, the kindergarten kindness list covers the same age from the other side. The wider selection across ages 3–7 lives at best books about sharing and kindness.