Age range: Preschool through 2nd grade.

Recommended for: Children who are perfectionistic about their artwork (or other types of activities) will benefit from this book’s fun, concrete introduction to the idea that mistakes can be great opportunities for creativity. It leads well into doing an art project of turning one’s own artistic blemishes (e.g., tears, smudges) into beautiful creations.

Age range: Kindergarten through 2nd grade, maybe 3rd.

Recommended for: A child with a lot of safety-oriented worries who is at all interested in knights or medieval lore. This story destigmatizes anxiety (knights are inherently cool and brave, right?) and presents the value of exposure (i.e., doing things they care about even if they’re scary) and expectancy violations (i.e., bad outcomes happen, and they’re not nearly as bad as the knight expected). Different coping strategies are briefly shared by the knight’s classmates (also knights), which might give these techniques a bit of extra credibility! The knight is particularly anxious about participating in jousting practice in front of his classmates; this will likely resonate with children who experience significant anxiety in performance situations (e.g., sporting events, recitals, etc.).

Age range: Preschool through 2nd grade.

Recommended for: This is a lovely read for a child who is reluctant to try something if they think they’re not good at it or won’t be good at it. It shows how just getting started can be the beginning of a new passion and a sense of accomplishment. It also suggests that being “good” at something is often a limited construct and that there are many ways to define success.

Age range: Kindergarten through 3rd grade.

Recommended for: Kids who are inclined to think that worst possible scenarios will happen may benefit from this book’s messages that our Whatifs (in this book, pictured as cute flying monsters) can be both “grim” (e.g., “What if my dog runs away) and hopeful (e.g., “What if there’s chocolate cake after our recital”), and that more hopeful Whatifs help us to feel better and often come true. The main character Cora is anxious about a piano recital; this book could also be great to read with children who get particularly anxious about performances.

Age range: Preschool through 2nd grade.

Recommended for: This book is a really fun read for a child who has a fear of monsters under the bed or in the closet, but who knows (at least on some level) that monsters aren’t real. It helps a child to shift their view on monsters from dangerous to silly and innocuous. It’s also just a very adorable book.

Age range: Kindergarten through 3rd grade.

Recommended for: Children who struggle to tolerate making mistakes may be inspired by this book to see mistakes as opportunities. It’s a beautiful book about art, and creativity, and being a work-in-progress. Therapists and/or caregivers may enjoy using this book to segue into an art activity that plays with mistakes.

Age range: 1st grade through 5th grade.

Age range: Kindergarten through 2nd grade.

Recommended for: This story is an excellent read for a child who gets stuck on a creation needing to be perfect. It encourages children to create (i.e., draw, write) without focusing on getting something “right” by showing the value of imperfection (“ish”). It can also start a conversation about how the exact same creation can be criticized by one person and loved by another, so one shouldn’t put too much weight in someone’s negative opinion.

Age range: Preschool through 1st grade.

Recommended for: A sweet read for children who feel shy in situations where they’re expected to make new friends. Provides the perspective that there are probably lots of other children out there who feel the same way as the child reading the book and who would love to play if the child were willing to take a risk and ask.

Age range: Preschool through kindergarten.

Recommended for: This story teaches the worry management strategy of creating a worry box (i.e., writing down one’s worries and putting them in a box) through a sweet and reassuring story of a bear with a lot of worries who visits a waterfall with his older sister and makes a new friend. Worry boxes can help children build awareness of their worry thoughts. They can also help to contain worry time to certain designated moments (e.g., a therapy session, after school) when the child’s worries can be discussed with a trusted adult.

Age range: 2nd through 5th, or even 6th grade.

Recommended for: This book is best for a more mature, verbal child who has some insight into their thoughts and feelings. It takes seriously the intensity of children’s feelings of shame and helps kids to recognize and name the feeling, as well as to share about what is causing them to feel shame. This book is appropriate for a child who has experienced trauma or abuse and is subsequently feeling shame, as well as a child who struggles more generally with feelings of inadequacy or negative self-talk. (It makes a nod to shame sometimes being the result of “something we did or didn’t do,” as well as “something done to us.”)

Age range: Preschool through 2nd grade

Recommended for: For a child struggling with perfectionism in the context of group projects or collaborative activities with friends (perhaps they are getting mad at other kids for not doing things “right,” or maybe they feel like they always need to be in charge), this book is both validating and thought-provoking. It aligns itself with a perfectionistic child and presents the possibility that sometimes letting things be less-than-perfect ultimately results in a more perfect experience: “The decorations were wonky…and the cake was stale…It was not at all what Beaver had planned, but it was the best birthday he ever had. It was, in fact, perfect.”

Age range: Kindergarten through 3rd grade.

Recommended for: Introduces the concept of a Worry Monster to help children start to identify their worries and recognize that they probably aren’t the truth. Helps a child to start challenging their worries with self-affirmations and engagement in feared activities. The Worry Monster intervention is widely used by therapists to help children to address worries. Children who have some insight into their worries (and can put them into words) will likely benefit from reading this book.

Age range: Kindergarten through 3rd grade.

Recommended for: Children who are burdened by self-criticism after they make mistakes will likely benefit from this story’s description of shame and the reminder that mistakes don’t define their self-worth. It provides a lovely model of a mother joining her child in his emotional pain and then helping him to gently challenge his shaming self-talk.

Age range: 1st grade through 4th grade.

Recommended for: Great to read with a child who has a lot of negative self-talk who will benefit from learning to challenge these thoughts. This book pulls for kids to draw their own versions of the Awfulizer and to start thinking about what lies their Awfulizer is telling them about themselves.

Age range: Kindergarten through 3rd grade.

Recommended for: In child-friendly language, this book provides an explanation of anxiety and how it is often a false alarm, and it teaches children five mindfulness strategies to reconnect with their sense of safety and calm. This is a good fit for children who are often nervous and who have some insight into their thoughts and feelings. The strategies articulated in this book are applicable to older children and adults as well. Grown-ups with anxiety, you might like this book as much as your child (or perhaps more!).

Age range: Kindergarten through 3rd grade.

Recommended for: For a child who gets stuck in worries about unknowns or unlikely bad outcomes, this book is a fun, silly way to start a conversation about what is “most likely” going to happen tomorrow and how delightful that can be.

Age range: Kindergarten through 3rd grade.

Recommended for: This book is perfect for a child who has been exposed to too much news or adult talk about war, pandemics, climate change, etc. and who is now worried that the future will inevitably be bleak and terrible. It reminds children in a super fun and quirky way that nothing is inevitable and that they can use their imagination to think up alternative ways the future could unfold.

Age range: Best for kids in preschool and early- to mid-elementary school, but it’s still a good fit for a developmentally younger and/or more emotionally distressed 8- or 9-year-old who would benefit from a simple, calm introduction to trauma and therapy.

Recommended for: This book is great for caregivers to read with a child prior to starting therapy or for a therapist to read with a client prior to starting trauma treatment. It really pulls for the child to share their story, so if a parent might be triggered by this (i.e., if a parent also experienced the frightening event and is going through their own trauma process), I’d recommend using this book as a set-up for therapy, rather than an at-home intervention. It is best for children who witnessed a specific frightening event (e.g., a car crash, domestic violence, a hate crime) rather than multiple, complex traumas.

Age range: Ideal for preschool through 2nd grade. The animals in the story are approximately kindergarteners or even preschoolers (based on a brief mention of the school skills they are learning).

Recommended for: This book is really great for a young child who has experienced something very frightening. It’s applicable to children who have experienced complex trauma as well as specific events (e.g., a car accident). Caregivers can read this book with their children as a way to start talking about kids’ feelings and how they can cope with them; it’s also great for therapists to read with kids prior to starting trauma treatment.