10 Children’s Books About Empathy

Clara is a young nature enthusiast who loves to collect beautiful rocks. Instead of keeping them for herself, she paints uplifting messages on them and returns them to the woods for others to find.

Sheldon the turtle is having a lousy day until he finds two of Clara’s creations. The kind words on his new rocks make him feel much better. Soon, Sheldon and his friends are telling all the animals in the forest about the kindness rocks so that everyone can enjoy them. They start to make a habit of searching out new ones.

When Clara moves away, the animals stop finding the stones. Sheldon soon realizes that he, too, can find ways to make his friends and neighbors happy. He goes to work making his own messages to inspire others.

How fun would it be to read this book with a little one before helping them paint their own kindness rocks? After, you could distribute them in friend’s and neighbor’s yards for some socially distanced fun.

Taylor is having a hard time. When he tries to explain the source of his sadness to his animal friends, they’re all full of opinions about what Taylor should do. What Taylor really needs is someone to lend a listening ear and try to understand his feelings instead of giving solutions.

This is a wonderful story for helping your little one understand the importance of giving others room to voice their thoughts and feelings.

This book introduces examples of empathetic behaviors to children that they can replicate in their own lives. Bussolari challenges readers to make inferences about someone’s feelings based on situations, facial expressions, and other indicators. From there, she has them process through how to provide comfort and encouragement. Comforting sick or hurt loved ones, making people feel included, and sharing resources with those in need are all covered in scenarios children will likely face at home or at school. This book about empathy for children is full of thoughtful questions that will help you engage with your young reader in meaningful ways. There’s also a section for parents and educators in the back with activities for building empathy that were developed by a credentialed school psychologist.

Lily is nervous about starting at a new school. She doesn’t look like her classmates and she’s still learning English, so she’s afraid that she won’t fit in. It doesn’t help that everything seems to go wrong on the morning of her first day. The people that acknowledge her at all don’t seem to have anything nice to say until she meets Tilly. It turns out all she needed to face the afternoon ahead was a smile and kind words from a brand new friend.

After talking to your little reader about ways they can help others feel included like Tilly helped Lily, there are 25 acts of kindness you can practice together in the back of the book.

Jeremy has been wanting the cool new shoes everyone else at school has, but his grandmother can’t afford them. To make things worse, his classmates make fun of him when his own shoes fall apart and have to be replaced with free ones from the guidance counselor.

Jeremy finally finds a pair of the cool shoes at a thrift shop. Soon, though, he realizes a friend’s shoes are taped together. He decides to pass the cool shoes along to his friend that needs them more than he does.

This is a sweet book about friendship, selflessness, the difference between needs and wants.

This book is about how one act of kindness can lead to many more. On the way to school, Dot tries to cheer up a sick neighbor and helps a mail carrier who dropped their mail bag. Making others smile makes Dot smile too, so he decides to be kind all day. At school, he has another opportunity when he asks a new student named Bonnie if she wants to play.

Knowing how good it made her feel to be included, Bonnie begins passing on acts of kindness the first chance she gets. Eventually, someone that she helped shares an act of kindness with Dot, making things come full circle.