Children's Books About Bullying: 12 Picture Books for Ages 3–7

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One thing first, because it matters more than the list. If your child is being bullied right now, a picture book is not the fix. That needs adults: the teacher, the school, a written note of what happened and when. Being kinder is not your child's job to solve, and no story replaces someone stepping in. Our guide on helping a child who's being bullied covers that side. What books are genuinely good for is everything around it. They give your child language for what happened. They show what it looks like to speak up for someone else. And they build the everyday kindness that makes mean behaviour less likely to start at all.

That middle one is why so many of these stories are told from the point of view of the child watching rather than the child being picked on. When Lynn Hawkins, Debra Pepler and Wendy Craig filmed children in school playgrounds, they found other children were there for most bullying episodes but stepped in for only about a fifth of them, and that when a child did step in, the bullying stopped within ten seconds in over half of those cases. Christina Salmivalli's research on bullying as a group process gives the onlookers names of their own: the assistants, the ones who laugh along, the ones who look away, and the defenders who do something. Which is a remarkable thing to be able to tell a four-year-old. You are not a spare part in this. Most of the books below are really about that job.

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

Everyone carries an invisible bucket. Kind words fill it, mean ones dip into it, and dipping empties your own bucket too. It's a simple picture and it sticks. Thousands of schools use the language, so there's a fair chance your child already comes home talking about filling and dipping. The revised edition deliberately swapped the noun "bully" for the verb "bullying", so it describes what someone did instead of labelling who they are. Best all-rounder here if you only want one book. View Have You Filled a Bucket Today? on Amazon →

2. The Recess Queen by Alexis O'Neill

Mean Jean rules the playground and nobody swings, kicks or bounces until she says so. Then tiny new girl Katie Sue turns up, doesn't know the rules, and does the one thing nobody has tried: she asks Jean to jump rope with her. It's bouncy and funny with a brilliant read-aloud rhythm, and underneath it lands a real point. Unkindness often comes from being outside the game rather than from being wicked. View The Recess Queen on Amazon →

3. Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson

Chloe decides not to be friends with Maya, the new girl in worn-out shoes, and the other children follow her lead. Then Maya moves away and Chloe never gets the chance to put it right. The ending doesn't tidy itself up. That's exactly why it works, because it sits with the regret of having been the one who turned away. It's the most powerful book on this list and the one to read yourself first. It suits the older end of the range, roughly 5 to 8, rather than a three-year-old. View Each Kindness on Amazon →

4. Be Kind by Pat Zietlow Miller

Tanisha spills grape juice on her dress and the other children laugh. The girl telling the story wants to help but doesn't know how, so she spends the book working out what "be kind" actually means when you're small and the moment has already gone. Gentle, and unusually honest about how hard it is to do the right thing in the second it's needed. View Be Kind on Amazon →

5. Enemy Pie by Derek Munson

A boy has exactly one name on his enemy list: Jeremy Ross. Dad says he knows a recipe for enemy pie, but there's a catch. You have to spend a whole day being nice to your enemy first. You can see where it's going, and children love getting there before the narrator does. Good for a summer when a friendship has soured, or for a child who has decided someone is "mean" and stopped looking any further. View Enemy Pie on Amazon →

6. Strictly No Elephants by Lisa Mantchev

A boy and his tiny pet elephant are turned away from the local Pet Club, so they find another child who's been shut out too and start a club where everyone is welcome. Quiet, lovely, and the best of these for the plain experience of being left out. For children this age, that is usually what bullying actually looks like. View Strictly No Elephants on Amazon →

7. Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes

Chrysanthemum loves her name right up until the first day of school, when Victoria announces that it is far too long and that she is named after a flower. She wilts a little more each day. From the outside almost nothing happens here, which is exactly the value of it: a few words, repeated, aimed at the thing a child was proudest of. The rescue arrives from a teacher rather than a classmate, so it reads well next to a book where another child is the one who speaks up. Preschool to third grade on the listing. View Chrysanthemum on Amazon →

8. The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig

Nobody is cruel to Brian. He is simply never picked, never asked and never noticed, and the illustrations draw him in grey while the other children are in colour. Then a new boy arrives, one small kindness lands, and the colour starts to reach him. This is the book for the quiet version of the problem, the one parents rarely hear about because there is nothing to report. Amazon lists it from about five to eight, so it suits the older end of this range. View The Invisible Boy on Amazon →

9. Stick and Stone by Beth Ferry

Stick and Stone are each on their own until Pinecone starts on Stone, and Stick says the thing out loud: leave him alone. It rhymes, it runs to a handful of words a page, and a three-year-old can follow every bit of it. If you want one book that shows a small child what speaking up actually looks like, this is the one for the younger end of the range. View Stick and Stone on Amazon →

10. Swimmy by Leo Lionni

A shoal of little fish stay hidden because of the big one that eats them, until Swimmy works out that if they swim together in the shape of an enormous fish, they can cross the ocean in daylight. It is more than sixty years old and it does something none of the others manage: it tells a child that the answer to somebody bigger is usually not facing them alone. The painted pages are worth a slow read on their own. View Swimmy on Amazon →

11. Ravi's Roar by Tom Percival

Ravi is the smallest in his family, and one furious afternoon he turns into a tiger. Roaring gets him what he wants, then leaves him on his own in the park with nobody willing to play. It is not a bullying story, and it earns its place because of who it is for: the child whose temper makes other children back off, which at four or five is often the child who ends up being called mean. Amazon puts it at three to six. View Ravi's Roar on Amazon →

12. The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld

Taylor builds something wonderful, it gets knocked down, and every animal turns up with advice about what Taylor should do next. Only the rabbit comes close and says nothing at all. This is the afterwards book, for the evening when something happened at school and every instinct you have is to fix it. It shows a child what being sat with looks like, and it quietly shows the grown-up reading it the same thing. View The Rabbit Listened on Amazon →

The 12 books at a glance

A four-week plan for Bullying Prevention Month

October is National Bullying Prevention Month in the United States, run by PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center, and in 2026 its Unity Day falls on Wednesday 21 October, when schools ask everyone to wear orange. If a note has come home about it and you'd like to do something at home rather than just find an orange top, one book a week covers the ground without turning the month into a project.

• Week one, the words. Have You Filled a Bucket Today? gives your child language they can actually use at school, and it's probably the language the school already uses.
• Week two, the other side. Chrysanthemum, so your child hears what a few repeated words feel like to the one on the receiving end.
• Week three, the job. The Recess Queen or Strictly No Elephants, or Stick and Stone if your child is three or four, then the question that matters: what would you have done?
• Week four, the weight of it. Each Kindness, if your child is five or over. Read it yourself first.

One page rather than two, if you're deciding where to spend the month: this list is the broad one, written for whatever your child is walking into, including being on the receiving end. Our anti-bullying books list is narrower on purpose, all five written for the bystander, the child who watches and could change the whole thing by saying a name out loud.

How to read these so they actually land

Read the story once for the story. Don't stop to draw the moral out, because small children shut down fast when a book turns into a lesson. On the second reading, pause at the moment where somebody could have stepped in and ask what your child would have done. Then leave it alone. The part that does the real work comes later, in an ordinary week, when you name it out loud as it happens. "You saw she was on her own and you went over. That's the thing we read about." That's what moves a story from something your child heard to something your child does.

And say this one out loud more than once: telling an adult is not tattling. Children this age often believe that it is, which is precisely how mean behaviour carries on unseen. For more on the kindness side, see raising a kind, sharing friend and the best books about sharing and kindness.