Children’s Books About Animals (And Why My Son Picks the Animal Every Night)

7 min read

Most nights, I ask my son which animal Kitty and Dino should help next.

Sometimes he gives me a whole plot. Usually he just says a name. A parrot. A zebra. A ladybird, once, right after he saw his first one flying in those looping circles and asked me what it was. Forty-three books later, he has picked nearly all of them, and I have never once had to talk him into being interested.

That is the whole case for animal stories, really. You do not have to sell them.

Why an animal reaches a child that a person cannot

If I write a story about a boy who is scared to jump into a pool, my son knows immediately that I am talking about him, and the shutters come down. If I write about a penguin who is scared to make a big jump, he leans in.

It is the same lesson. The difference is that the penguin is not him, so he can look straight at the feeling without having to defend himself from it. Child psychologists have a tidy phrase for this and I do not need it. Any parent who has tried the direct approach at bedtime already knows.

The second thing is simpler. Children have favorite animals long before they have favorite themes. No four-year-old has ever asked me for a story about perseverance. Plenty have asked for a story about a tiger.

Animal books for what your child is going through

Big cats, for the big feelings

Stripes the Tiger is hurt and cannot get home, and what weighs on him is his family waiting. It came out of a week in 2021 when my wife and I both had COVID and had to stay away from our baby. For a child dealing with separation, a night away, a parent traveling, that is the one.

Leo the Lion teaches music and plays the flute, because I got tired of every lion in every book being king of something. And Sprinkles the Cheetah is bracing for a birthday nobody is coming to, which is the first book I ever wrote and still the one I would hand a parent first.

Farm and garden animals, for everyday problems

Gordon the Rooster loses a garden full of plants that have grown legs and wandered off. Underneath the silliness is a real rooster my father-in-law bought off a farm so it could live, and the idea that every living thing deserves a chance.

Penny the Rat is a problem-solving story about a drought and a dying vegetable garden. Bently the Goat is the forest doctor, cut off from his patients by a rockslide, and worth reading before a checkup. Pippin the Pig wants to fly, which everybody knows pigs cannot do, and does it anyway.

Forest animals, for courage and patience

Rustle the Fox has cubs too sick to stand and a dangerous path between him and the cure. Bramble the Bear is the forest’s healer, hunting rare ingredients from his grandfather’s old recipe book.

Thumper the Rabbit is our patience book. His magic seeds only bloom after soil, water, sun and a whole night of moonlight, so the waiting is the entire story. If waiting is your live problem, we wrote more about books that actually teach waiting.

Otty the Deer is the nature one, about saving an ancient oak, and it came from a real hundred-year-old tree near my hometown that the road was curved around rather than cut down. Humphrey the Hedgehog is riddles and a healing spring, for the child who likes puzzling things out.

Jungle and water animals, for curiosity

Milo the Monkey mixes the wrong fruit and floats the entire jungle into the sky. Nobody scolds him. They just fix it together, which is the point, and it is the one I reach for when my son has made a mess out of being curious rather than careless.

Chomper the Crocodile is not the villain for once, he is the one whose river is drying up. Bobo the Baboon has a stone tablet he cannot read and a grandmother who is very ill.

Small animals, for the youngest listeners

Lila the Ladybird keeps freezing mid-air trying a trick called the Triple Twist, and practices until she lands it. Melody the Babbler is a bird whose guitar breaks so she cannot sing the morning song, which is about the softest problem a book can have and probably the first story in the series.

Penny the Penguin is the scared one, and the one I wrote when my own son begged to skip swimming for a year. Sunny the Parrot is for the dark, and came from my own certainty at six that a ghost lived under my bed.

How to actually pick one

Two ways, and the first is better.

Let your child choose the animal. Show three or four covers and let them point. They will be very sure and completely unable to explain why, and it does not matter. A story they picked gets listened to.

Or match it to the week you are having. Swimming lessons starting, so Penny. Grandma in hospital, so Marvin or Bobo. A friend left them out, so Sprinkles. This is the one that makes a book do real work, because the story arrives at the moment the feeling is already in the room.

If you would rather choose by age than by animal, we have a guide to picture books for 3, 4 and 5 year olds, and the gift guide sorts everything by age and theme if you are buying for someone else.

One more thing about animals

The reason I keep writing them is not really the psychology. It is that asking my son which animal comes next is the best part of my day, and it has been for three years.

He has sent me down some strange roads. A babbler, because they were shouting in our garden. A ladybird, because he had never seen one before. A snake, which turned into a story about his great-grandfather. I would not have found any of those on my own.

If your child has a favorite animal, there is a decent chance one of these is already about it. All 43 are here.