Children's Books About Compassion (Ages 2–8)

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The conversation that sent me looking for these happened in our kitchen. One of ours had come home from school and mentioned, the way children mention enormous things, that a boy in her class had cried at lunch and nobody sat with him. She had noticed. She had minded. She had also stayed exactly where she was. When I asked why, she said, "I didn't know what to say to him." That is the whole gap, in one sentence from a six-year-old.

There is research that makes sense of it, and it is worth two minutes before you spend any money. Psychologists separate compassion from something they call empathic distress. Tania Singer and Olga Klimecki describe empathic distress as a strong aversive and self-oriented response to the suffering of others, one that brings with it a desire to withdraw from the situation to protect yourself from the feeling. Compassion they describe differently: warmth, concern and care for the other person, together with a strong motivation to improve their wellbeing. The first pulls a child back. The second walks them over. So a sensitive child who freezes when a friend cries is often not feeling too little. They may be feeling too much, with nothing to do about it.

Which is why I stopped looking for sad books and started looking for books where somebody acts. In the eight below, a character notices and then does a specific, copyable thing: sits down, brings soup, fetches a chair, says the name of the child nobody says.

1. Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by E. B. Lewis

A new girl called Maya arrives in Chloe's class with the wrong shoes and the wrong coat, and Chloe decides not to be her friend. The others follow. Then one day Maya is not there, and she does not come back, and the teacher drops a stone in a bowl of water to show how a small kindness ripples outwards. Chloe has nothing to drop. What makes this the best book on the subject is also what makes it hard to read aloud: the kind thing never happens, and there is no repair at the end. Nancy Paulsen Books, 2012, and a 2013 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book. Know what you are buying. It leaves a child quiet, and from about five that quiet is the point. Below four or so it is simply too heavy, so start further down this list. View Each Kindness on Amazon →

2. The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld

Taylor's block tower is knocked down and the animals queue up to help. The chicken wants to talk about it, the bear wants to shout, the elephant wants to remember it exactly, the hyena wants to laugh. None of it is any use. Then the rabbit arrives and does nothing at all except move closer and stay. This is the book that answers my daughter's "I didn't know what to say", because its answer is that you do not have to say anything, and children take that in immediately. Dial Books for Young Readers, 2018. The honest caution is that it is almost too neat: every animal is one idea, so an older child may find it a bit tidy. For two to six it is close to perfect, and it will change how you sit with your own child after a bad afternoon. View The Rabbit Listened on Amazon →

3. A Sick Day for Amos McGee by Philip C. Stead, illustrated by Erin E. Stead

Amos is a zookeeper who visits five animals every day: chess with the elephant, a race with the tortoise, a handkerchief for the rhinoceros with the runny nose. Then Amos wakes up with a cold, and the animals get on the bus and come to him. The reason it belongs here rather than on a friendship list is that the care is particular. Each animal brings what Amos brought them, which is a much better lesson than "be nice" and a far easier one for a child to copy. Roaring Brook Press, 2010, and Erin E. Stead won the 2011 Caldecott Medal for it. It is a slow, gentle, woodblock-quiet book, so if your child wants jokes and noise this is a bedtime read rather than a lunchtime one. View A Sick Day for Amos McGee on Amazon →

4. Bear Feels Sick by Karma Wilson, illustrated by Jane Chapman

Bear has a cold, so the mouse and the hare and the badger make him tea and soup and sit with him until he sleeps, and then Bear gets better and the whole lot of them come down with it instead. It rhymes, it repeats, and a two-year-old can join in by the third reading. This is the youngest genuine compassion book I know of: there is somebody who feels bad, there are friends who do practical things, and nobody has to carry any guilt about it. Karma Wilson with Jane Chapman's illustrations, published September 2007. The limitation is that it is comfort rather than courage, so it will not help with the harder situation where the person who needs you is somebody your child does not already love. View Bear Feels Sick on Amazon →

5. Sharing Silver: the one about why giving comes back

Bandit the dog steals honey from a beehive, gets stung for it, and Silver the Super Pup walks him round the forest showing him what giving actually does. Olivia the owl shares her music and the forest fills her larder. Benny the beaver builds a waterwheel that makes pools for the fish, and the animals bring him berries. Greedy Gus the goat keeps his cookies and ends up alone with crumbs. It is reciprocity, taught in scenes small enough for a three-year-old, and the reason it sits mid-list rather than near the top is that reciprocity is the motive for compassion rather than compassion itself.

“The kindest animals have the most friends, and those who help the most have helpers everywhere.”

Sharing Silver: a superhero training story about sharing and giving, for ages 3–7. Written by us, and on this list for the reason a small child might want to help in the first place — see the note below for what it does not do.

View Sharing Silver on Amazon

Here is where it fits. Nobody in Sharing Silver is comforted while they are sad. No animal notices another one suffering and responds to the suffering itself, which is the thing numbers one to four are about. What it does have is the last page, where Bandit goes back to the bee he robbed, apologises, and hands over his squeaky toy to put by the hive so it will squeak if the next thief steps on it. That is a child-sized act of protection for someone who got hurt, and it is the moment our own children quote. Use it for the why, and use The Rabbit Listened for the how. You can read a sample first, and how Sharing Silver teaches helping others goes through the method properly.

6. Stick and Stone by Beth Ferry, illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld

Stone is lonely until a pinecone starts picking on him, and Stick steps in: "Leave Stone alone." Later a storm blows Stick into a puddle and Stone rolls out to get him. The whole thing is told in about forty short rhyming lines, which is why it earns a place that a longer, worthier book would not. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, April 2015. It is the only one here about compassion that requires a bit of nerve, and that matters, because speaking up for somebody is harder than comforting them. If your child is the one watching from the edge of the yard, pair it with helping a child who's being bullied. View Stick and Stone on Amazon →

7. The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig, illustrated by Patrice Barton

Brian is the boy nobody notices, and the illustrations do the clever thing: he is drawn in grey pencil while the rest of the class is in colour, and he gains colour across the book as he is drawn in. What tips him over is small and ordinary. A new boy called Justin gets laughed at over his lunch, Brian leaves him a note, and Justin asks him to join a project. Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2013. This is the one to read before a new term or after a lonely week, and the question it hands you is the useful one: who in your class might feel grey? Worth knowing that it is wordier than most books here, so it suits five and up better than three. View The Invisible Boy on Amazon →

8. A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams

A fire takes everything the family owns, the neighbours arrive with a table and a pizza and a bag of curtains, and then the girl, her mother and her grandmother start filling a jar with coins to buy one good armchair. It is here because it shows compassion at the scale children rarely see it: a street doing something, and a child saving for a year for somebody else's comfort. Greenwillow Books, 1982, and it has not dated. The caution is the opening, which some four-year-olds find frightening, and the fact that the pleasure of it is slow. Read it when you have the patience for a quiet book about money and love. View A Chair for My Mother on Amazon →

What to do after the book

Reading is the easy half. Two things made the difference here, and neither is a conversation about feelings. First, give them a script. "Do you want to talk, or do you want me to sit with you?" is a real sentence a six-year-old can carry into a playground, and it is lifted straight out of The Rabbit Listened. Second, give them a job. Children freeze because they do not know the next physical move, so name one: sit beside them, bring them the water, ask what would help. A job beats an instruction to be kind every single time.

One habit worth dropping, because I had it. Do not make your child perform the kindness for you afterwards. The moment "did you look after him?" becomes a question with a right answer, you have taught them to report rather than to notice.

How to choose between them

Pick by the situation in front of you. A friend who is upset and your child does not know what to say is The Rabbit Listened. Somebody left out at school is The Invisible Boy. Somebody being picked on is Stick and Stone. Somebody poorly at home is Bear Feels Sick for a toddler and A Sick Day for Amos McGee from four. A child who has been unkind and needs to feel the weight of it, from five, is Each Kindness. A family or a street in trouble is A Chair for My Mother. And when the question is simply why bother helping anyone, Sharing Silver is the one that answers it.

For the shelves either side of this one, best books about empathy for kids covers the understanding half rather than the acting half, children's books about kindness is the broader and gentler version, and best books about helping others goes further into practical helping. If you would rather do something than read something, how to teach a child empathy and the full kindness and sharing guide are the practical companions.