8 Picture Books About Kindness That Stay With Kids

10 min read

A few years ago we went to a children’s home to drop off some gifts. A boy about my son’s age had arrived that same morning. He was sitting by himself, crying, and he had not stopped since he got there.

My son was small. He had never seen anything like that before. He went quiet for a while, the way kids do when something is too big to ask about.

Then he walked over and handed the boy his own toy.

Nobody told him to. We had not talked about it in the car. He just did it.

That is the strange thing about kindness. You can explain it a hundred times at the dinner table and watch it go nowhere. Then one afternoon your kid does it on his own, in a room you were not expecting, and you realize it got in some other way.

Why you can’t just tell a kid to be kind

I’ll say the unpopular part plainly. I don’t think you can teach a child kindness by instructing them to be kind. “Say sorry.” “Share with your sister.” “Be nice to the new boy.” Those get you compliance, and compliance disappears the second you leave the room.

What seems to actually work is letting a child watch someone else make the choice, and feel something about it. That is the one thing a story does that a lecture cannot. Your kid is not being corrected. He’s just watching a character he likes decide to do a hard, good thing, and quietly deciding what he thinks about it.

Books are the gentlest teacher I’ve found for the big stuff. It’s the same reason we lean on stories for patience and for teamwork. The lesson arrives sideways, and it stays.

Here are eight we come back to.

8 picture books about kindness

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

Everyone carries an invisible bucket. Kind things fill it. Mean things dip from it. That’s the whole concept, and for a three or four year old it’s close to perfect, because it turns something abstract into a picture they can hold onto.

It’s the most literal book on this list, and that’s the point at this age. Fair warning, once your kid has the vocabulary they will use it on you. Mine informed me I was dipping from his bucket because I said no to a second yogurt.

2. Be Kind by Pat Zietlow Miller, illustrated by Jen Hill

A girl named Tanisha spills grape juice on her dress and gets laughed at. The narrator, another kid in the class, wants to help and doesn’t know how. She spends the rest of the book working out what kindness even means.

What I like is that she isn’t naturally good at it. She fumbles. She overthinks it. That’s a much more honest picture of a kid than the ones where the hero just knows what to do.

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

Brian is the kid nobody notices. He isn’t bullied, he’s just left out, which is quieter and in some ways worse. The illustrations show him in gray while the rest of the class is in color. When a new boy gets teased, Brian is the one who reaches out, and he starts to fill in with color.

If your child is on either side of this, the one who feels invisible or the one who hasn’t noticed someone else is, this one does a lot of work without saying much.

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

Chloe and her friends won’t play with the new girl, Maya. Maya keeps trying. They keep turning her away. Then Maya moves, and it’s too late, and Chloe is left holding that.

This is the one that doesn’t tidy up. There’s no scene where Chloe apologizes and everyone hugs, because Maya is gone. Her teacher drops a stone in a bowl of water and talks about ripples, and Chloe has to sit with the ripple she didn’t make.

It’s a harder read, better for five and up, and it’s the one my son asked about days later. It won the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award. Worth it if you’re ready for a real conversation instead of a comfortable one.

5. Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts, illustrated by Noah Z. Jones

Jeremy wants the shoes everyone at school has. His grandma can’t afford them. He finds a used pair at a thrift store, buys them even though they’re a size too small, and then notices his classmate Antonio needs shoes more than he does.

Kindness that costs something is different from kindness that’s free, and kids feel that difference immediately. This book gets at it without a single line of moralizing.

6. Strictly No Elephants by Lisa Mantchev, illustrated by Taeeun Yoo

A boy and his tiny elephant get turned away from Pet Club Day. On the way home in the rain they meet a girl with a skunk who’s been shut out too. So they start their own club, and the sign on the door says “All Are Welcome.”

Lovely for a preschooler, and it pairs well with anything you’re already doing around including other kids. Being kind and making room turn out to be the same skill.

7. Kitty and Dino Help Gordon the Rooster

This one’s ours, and there’s a real bird behind it. My father-in-law bought a rooster off a farm where it was about to be killed, purely so it could go on living. When my son heard how that happened, it turned into a long conversation about how every living thing gets a shot at life, animal or tree.

I believe that, and I wanted him to. So Gordon became a story about a rooster and a garden full of things worth caring for. If you want the full backstory, I wrote about the rescue here.

It’s a good pick for a child who already loves animals, because it takes their soft spot for creatures and stretches it a little wider.

8. Kitty and Dino Help Sprinkles the Cheetah

And this is the one from the orphanage. Sprinkles is a cheetah having a birthday with nobody at it. Kitty and Dino show up with cookies, and instead of dropping them off and leaving, they stay, and they go find the other animals nearby.

That was the part I wanted my son to see. Not the gift. The staying. It was the first book I ever wrote, and it’s still the one I’d hand a parent first. There’s more on where it came from here.

What to say after you read

The book does maybe half the work. The rest is the two minutes afterward, and it does not need to be a whole discussion. Pick one.

Ask how the other kid felt, not what the lesson was. “How do you think Maya felt walking home?” gets you somewhere. “What did we learn?” gets you a shrug.

Let them be honest about the unkind character. If your kid says he would’ve ignored Maya too, don’t correct it. That’s the most useful thing he could tell you, and now you can actually talk about it.

Point back to the story later, in the real moment. Weeks after, when someone gets left out at the park, “remember the boy with the elephant?” does more than a fresh explanation. The story is already in there. You’re just pulling it up.

Notice it out loud when they do it. Not praise exactly, just naming it. “You gave him the first turn. He looked really happy.” Kids repeat what gets noticed.

Where to start

If your child is three or four, start with Have You Filled a Bucket Today? or Strictly No Elephants. If they’re five or older and you’re up for the harder conversation, Each Kindness is the one that stays with people.

And if you want a story where kindness is the whole quiet point, ours are ages 3 to 8 and free to read with Kindle Unlimited. Our gift guide sorts them by age and theme if you’re buying for someone, or you can just browse the whole series.

One book won’t make a child kind. Neither will eight. But my son handed over his toy in a room where nobody asked him to, and I don’t think that came from nowhere. The hardest version of this is kindness toward somebody who is unwell, where a child has almost nothing they can actually do about it. I wrote about books for a child with a grandparent who is ill separately.