Best Children's Books About Respect (Ages 3–7)

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One thing worth settling before the list. Respect and manners get sold as the same lesson and they are not. Manners are the words: please, thank you, waiting your turn to speak. Respect is what sits under them, which is treating a person as though they matter when nobody is checking. A child can have immaculate manners and still be the one giggling at the new girl's name. If it is genuinely the words you are after, our books about manners for kids covers that side. This page is about the people.

The books are ordered by which piece of respect each one teaches, not by age or by how the cover looks. Pick the one that matches what your child is currently getting wrong, and skip the rest until later.

1. Do Unto Otters: A Book About Manners — by Laurie Keller

Mr Rabbit finds out that otters are moving in next door and panics, because he has no idea how to get on with an otter. The owl's advice is the Golden Rule, and the rest of the book is Rabbit working through what that would actually require of him: be honest, be kind, share, say sorry, do not tease, do not interrupt. Keller's jokes fly fast and there are puns your child will not catch for two more years, which is what keeps it re-readable. It is filed under manners and it is really a respect book, because every rule in it is expressed as how the other creature would feel. Ages three to seven. View Do Unto Otters on Amazon →

2. Chrysanthemum — by Kevin Henkes

Chrysanthemum loves her name until her first day at school, when Victoria announces it is far too long and the giggling starts. Henkes is precise about how disrespect really works at this age: not one big act of cruelty but a drip, performed in front of children who say nothing. Read it for the classroom rather than for Victoria. Ask your child what any of the others could have done and you will get somewhere a lecture never gets you. Worth knowing that the rescue arrives from a teacher, not a classmate, and that gap is the whole conversation. Ages four to eight. View Chrysanthemum on Amazon →

3. The Rabbit Listened — by Cori Doerrfeld

Taylor builds something magnificent out of blocks and it collapses. The animals arrive one after another with advice: shout about it, laugh it off, go and knock something else down. Taylor wants none of it. Then the rabbit comes over, says nothing at all, and edges closer until Taylor is ready to talk. This is respect pointed at somebody's feelings rather than their belongings, and it is the piece adults get wrong at least as often as children do, because our instinct is to fix. Listed from age two, and it still lands at five or six. It doubles as comfort on a bad day. View The Rabbit Listened on Amazon →

4. Strictly No Elephants — by Lisa Mantchev

A boy with a tiny elephant for a pet turns up at the Pet Club and finds a sign on the door. He leaves, meets a girl with a skunk, and they go off and start a club with no sign at all. Taeeun Yoo's illustrations do most of the work here and the text stays out of the way, which is why it lands with three- and four-year-olds who are not ready for a discussion about inclusion. Respect for difference is an abstract phrase; a door somebody is not allowed through is not. Ages three to five. View Strictly No Elephants on Amazon →

5. Sharing Silver — for the child who is only kind to the people who are kind first

Bandit opens the book stealing honey from a beehive and gets stung for it. Rather than telling him off, Silver the Super Pup gives him one rule, "How you treat others is how you will be treated by others", and then walks him round Friendship Forest to see it play out: Olivia shares her music and the forest gives back to her, Benny's waterwheel helps everybody, and Greedy Gus the goat keeps his cookies and ends up alone. Sharing Silver ends with Bandit saying sorry to the bee and sharing the honey he is given back.

To be straight about the fit: this is a book about sharing and giving, and the word respect never appears in it. What it does carry is the Golden Rule in a form a preschooler can hold, and one idea the other books here do not argue for, which is going first with kindness before there is any sign it will be returned. It will not help with teasing, interrupting or a child who finds somebody different, so pair it with the books above for those. Written for ages three to seven, and short enough to read twice in a sitting.

“How you treat others is how you will be treated by others.”

Sharing Silver is a superhero training story about sharing, kindness and giving, written for ages 3 to 7. It teaches the Golden Rule that respect grows out of, through sharing rather than manners.

View Sharing Silver on Amazon

You can read a sample of Sharing Silver first to hear the voice. There is a reason this framing works on small children, incidentally. The pull to return what we have been given is one of the older ideas in social psychology, named the norm of reciprocity by the sociologist Alvin Gouldner in 1960, and children act on it long before they can explain it. Silver simply makes it visible.

6. My Mouth Is a Volcano! — by Julia Cook

Louis has so many important thoughts that they rumble up and erupt straight over whoever is speaking. Then it happens to him, and he does not enjoy it. This is the practical end of the list and the one to buy if the problem in your house is a child who cannot let anybody finish a sentence, because Cook gives them something to do about it rather than something to feel guilty about: bite the words down, breathe, wait. Letting someone finish is where respect starts for a lot of children. Ages four to seven, and it pairs well with our books about listening. View My Mouth Is a Volcano! on Amazon →

7. Each Kindness — by Jacqueline Woodson

Maya is new, her clothes are wrong, and Chloe decides not to be the one who talks to her. Every day Maya offers something and every day Chloe turns away. Then Maya's desk is empty, the teacher says she has moved, and that is the end of the book. There is no apology scene and no second chance, which is exactly why it works. Most stories hand a child the repair; this one shows them a door closing. E. B. Lewis paints Maya standing on her own at the edge of the yard and your child will recognise the picture. Read it when the problem is not cruelty but shrugging. Amazon puts it at kindergarten to third grade, and it needs a conversation afterwards rather than a bedtime lights-out. View Each Kindness on Amazon →

8. The Recess Queen — by Alexis O'Neill

Mean Jean runs the playground. She decides who swings, who kicks, who bounces, and nobody argues until a very small new girl called Katie Sue fails to notice the rules and asks her to jump rope. O'Neill writes it in a bouncing, chantable rhythm that children ask for again, and the resolution is the useful part: Jean is not punished or shamed out of the yard, she is invited into it. If the child in your house is the one deciding who gets to play, this is the book on the list written for them rather than about them. Preschool to third grade on Amazon's listing. View The Recess Queen on Amazon →

9. Me First — by Helen Lester

Pinkerton the pig has to be first. First off the bus, first through the door, first at the sandwich, and his enthusiasm for being first is what lands him doing chores for a Sand Witch who wanted a sandwich. Lynn Munsinger's pictures are very funny and the lesson never once gets said out loud, which is the reason a four-year-old will sit through it twice. Being first matters enormously to children this age. A book that lets them laugh at somebody else doing it gets further than being told to hang back. Ages four to seven. View Me First on Amazon →

10. The Invisible Boy — by Trudy Ludwig

Brian is not bullied. He is simply never picked, never invited, never the one anybody turns to, and Patrice Barton draws him in faint grey pencil while every other child is in full colour. When a new boy says one kind thing to him, the colour starts arriving. That single design choice explains more to a five-year-old about being overlooked than any amount of explaining. Where Strictly No Elephants is about a door somebody is kept out of, this is about the child nobody thought to open it for, and most classrooms have one. Ages five to eight. View The Invisible Boy on Amazon →

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

Everybody carries an invisible bucket, what you say and do either fills somebody's or dips into it, and dipping empties your own at the same time. Be straight with yourself about what this is: a concept book with a message, not a story with characters, so it will not hold a child who wants a plot. What it will do is hand your family a word. Once a four-year-old knows what dipping means, "that was a dip" ends an argument in three seconds where a lecture would have taken ten minutes and gone nowhere. Preschool to fourth grade on Amazon's listing, and it earns its place as the one you quote rather than the one you read. View Have You Filled a Bucket Today? on Amazon →

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

CJ and his nana ride the bus across town after church and CJ complains the whole way: why do they not have a car, why does he not have what his friends have. Nana answers every complaint by pointing at somebody, and by the last stop CJ is looking at a neighbourhood he had written off. This is the only book here about respecting people who have less than you do, which is a piece of it most picture books skip entirely. It took the Newbery Medal in 2016, unusually for a picture book. Christian Robinson's collage is worth slowing down for. Amazon lists it from about two to six, and older children get more from it. View Last Stop on Market Street on Amazon →

13. A Sick Day for Amos McGee — by Philip C. Stead

Amos is a zookeeper who visits the same five animals every day: chess with the elephant, a race with the tortoise that the tortoise is allowed to win, sitting quietly with the shy penguin. When Amos wakes up with a cold, the animals get on the bus and come to him. Erin Stead's woodblock illustrations are quiet enough that children go very still for it. The respect here is the unglamorous kind, which is noticing what a particular person actually needs and then turning up, and it is the version worth teaching a child who is already kind in bursts. A Caldecott Medal winner. Preschool and up, and it doubles as a bedtime book. View A Sick Day for Amos McGee on Amazon →

The 13 books at a glance

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

Match the book to the gap. A child who needs the rule spelled out in plain language needs the otters. A child who joins in with the giggling, or who watches it and says nothing, needs Chrysanthemum. A child who charges in to fix a friend's bad mood needs the rabbit. A child who has decided somebody is too different to play with needs the elephant. A child who only gives to the children who give back needs Silver. And a child who talks over the whole table needs Louis.

The second half of the list covers the problems that show up once a child is out in a yard with thirty others. A child who brushed somebody off and has not thought about it since needs Maya. A child who decides who is allowed to play needs Mean Jean. A child who shoves to the front of every queue needs Pinkerton. A child who has never once noticed the quiet one needs Brian. A child who cannot name what their words do needs the bucket. A child who thinks less of people with less needs the bus ride. And a child who is warm in bursts and absent when it counts needs Amos.

Then do the part almost everybody skips. Do not ask whether your child would have been respectful, because they will say yes; that is the answer the question is fishing for. Ask what they would have said, out loud, in words, standing where that character was standing. You will get some strange answers and that is the point. A sentence rehearsed at bedtime is far likelier to turn up at lunchtime than an agreement about respect in the abstract.

One caution while you do it. Keep respect and obedience apart, out loud, because a child will not separate them unaided. Respect is how you speak to somebody and how you treat them. Obedience is doing what you are told. A child can be entirely respectful and still say no, still refuse a hug, still tell you that a grown-up made them uncomfortable. Most of us absorbed a version of respect that quietly welded the two together, and that weld is exactly what stops a child speaking up when speaking up matters.

Expect it to take a while. The visible half of respect shows up early: a two-year-old can be taught to wait while somebody else is talking. The rest leans on working out what another person feels when it differs from what you feel. Psychologists call that perspective-taking, and research suggests it builds gradually across the preschool and early school years rather than arriving on a birthday. A four-year-old who laughs at somebody's name has usually not noticed the sting rather than decided to ignore it.

If your child is starting school this year, the kindergarten rung of this list narrows it to the five and six year old versions of the problem: the carpet, the line and the playground.

For more, see our guide to raising a kind, sharing friend, how to teach a child empathy for the skill sitting under every book on this page, and books about manners if it is the please and thank you you are chasing.