Best Books About Sibling Rivalry for Kids (Ages 3–7)

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1. Julius, the Baby of the World by Kevin Henkes

The best book there is on an older child's jealousy, and the funniest, because Kevin Henkes lets Lilly be genuinely awful about her new brother. She insults him, she pinches him under the blanket, she tells visitors he is disgusting. Then a cousin says something unkind about Julius and Lilly turns on her instantly, which is the truest ending in the whole category: you can loathe your sibling and defend them furiously in the same afternoon. Greenwillow Books, listed as preschool to grade 3. Buy it after the baby is home rather than before, when your child has stopped being excited and started being honest. View Julius, the Baby of the World on Amazon →

2. Peter's Chair by Ezra Jack Keats

The quiet one. Peter notices his old cradle painted pink, then his cot, and works out where this is going, so he takes his little blue chair and runs away with it as far as the front of his own house. It is a perfect small picture of a child losing his place, and it ends without anybody being told they were wrong to mind. First published in 1967 and still the gentlest route into this feeling for a two to five-year-old, especially a child who has gone quiet rather than loud. Puffin Books, listed as preschool to grade 2. View Peter's Chair on Amazon →

3. I'm a Big Sister and I'm a Big Brother by Joanna Cole

These are the practical ones, and they belong on the list for the weeks before the birth rather than after it. Joanna Cole, who wrote The Magic School Bus, walks a child through what a newborn actually does, which is mostly cry, feed and sleep, and then through the things the big one can do that a baby cannot. Rosalinda Kightley illustrates the current HarperCollins editions. They are matter-of-fact rather than sentimental, and that is the point: most of the shock of a new sibling is that nobody described the job first. Buy the one that matches your child, or both if you are expecting and do not know yet. View I'm a Big Sister on Amazon →  ·  View I'm a Big Brother on Amazon →

4. Noisy Nora by Rosemary Wells

For the child in the middle, which is the rivalry nobody buys a book for. Nora's big sister needs help with her homework and the baby needs feeding, so Nora slams, bangs, drops and eventually disappears, and the house only notices when it goes quiet. Rosemary Wells wrote it in rhyme, so it reads aloud beautifully and a four-year-old will have the last line off by heart within a week. It is also an unusually useful book for parents, because it names the mechanism honestly: a child who cannot get attention for being good will take it for being loud. Puffin Books, best around two to five. View Noisy Nora on Amazon →

5. It's Mine! by Leo Lionni

Three frogs on one island who argue about everything, in the exact tone two siblings use about a chair. Leo Lionni keeps the dialogue to almost nothing, mostly the word "mine", which is how these fights actually sound, and then a storm floods the island and the frogs spend a night squashed together on the last rock. Nobody makes them share. They simply discover it is better. Dragonfly Books, and the reading age skews young, so this is the one for a three-year-old who is not ready for a story with a plot yet. View It's Mine! on Amazon →

Quick comparison: at a glance

Ages below are the publishers' listings alongside our own experience of reading these at home, not a rule. Match the book to what is actually going on rather than to your child's birthday.

Why it starts so early, and why that is not your fault

Parents tend to assume sibling rivalry begins the day the younger one can grab something. It starts a long way before that. In the early 1980s the developmental psychologist Judy Dunn, with Carol Kendrick, followed forty families from shortly before a second baby arrived through that first year, watching them at home rather than in a lab. What came out of it, published as Siblings: Love, Envy and Understanding, is that the older child responds to the new arrival immediately, and that very young children work out how to provoke and how to comfort a sibling far sooner than anyone had assumed.

That is oddly reassuring once you sit with it. Two small children who know precisely how to wind each other up are not a discipline failure. They are two people paying very close attention to each other, which is also the raw material of a good relationship later. It also means the goal is not silence. Laurie Kramer's 2010 review in Child Development Perspectives made the case that focusing only on reducing conflict is aiming at the wrong thing, and that the better target is building the skills children need to get on well: talking to each other, solving a problem, taking a turn. A house can be quiet and cold. That is not what you are after.

What actually helps between the ages of three and seven

Stop refereeing every incident. When you arrive, decide who was right and hand the toy to someone, you have taught both children that the fastest route to winning is to shout for you first. Where it is safe, describing what you see and leaving the room works better: "you both want the blue cup, that is tricky," and then go. Most of the time they sort it out worse than you would have, and learn more.

Give each of them ten minutes a day that the other one does not get. It sounds too small to matter and it is the single change parents tell us made the fastest difference, because a great deal of what looks like rivalry is a child checking whether there is still enough of you to go round. Noisy Nora is the whole argument for this in thirty-two pages.

Then watch how you talk about them. "She is the sensible one" is a comparison your children will hear for twenty years, and it hands each of them a role to defend. Praise the thing rather than the child, and praise the moments you actually want more of, which is the two of them getting on. Most of us correct the fighting a dozen times a day and say nothing at all when they play nicely for an hour.

How to use these books without turning them into a telling-off

Read the story first and save the lesson. If a book turns up on the same afternoon as a big fight, your child will know exactly what it is for and will be reading a complaint. Read it because it is good, two or three times, and then use its words later, in the moment, when nobody is in trouble.

Buy for the specific situation rather than the shelf. A new baby on the way is I'm a Big Sister or I'm a Big Brother. A new baby already home and an older child being horrible about it is Julius. A child who has gone quiet and possessive is Peter's Chair. A child acting up for attention is Noisy Nora. And the ordinary grinding argument over objects, which is most days for most families, is It's Mine!, especially with a three-year-old. One book that matches beats five that nearly do.

Our guide to sibling rivalry goes further into the daily management of it, and when your child won't share toys covers the flashpoint itself. If you want to make turn-taking something they practise when nobody is cross, turn-taking games is the place to start, and teaching a child empathy handles the bit underneath all of it. For more books, the preschool sharing list and our wider best books about sharing and kindness overlap with this one, and everything sits inside our guide to raising a kind, sharing friend.