Best reads for children this year

GONE are the days when parents would read a handful of classics to their children at bedtime, with Beatrix Potter, Dr Seuss, and Roald Dahl on constant rotation. The reading list is likely to be a little more diverse nowadays.

Thanks to the “Greta effect”, there is a boom in children’s environmental books, as well as emotional intelligence ones. An inordinate number of books out this year are on kindness — a far cry from the old fashioned nursery rhymes in which people chopped off fingers with a carving knife. There is increasing attention on topics such as friendship, anxiety, finding your inner strength, believing in oneself — and even getting over insomnia with mindfulness.

Here are some of the best books to read your children this year.

• Fantastically Great Women Who Saved The Planet by Kate Pankhurst?; Bloomsbury Children’s Books
• The Seed of Compassion by the Dalai Lama; Penguin
• What the Ladybird Heard at the Seaside by Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks; Pan Macmillan
• Ten Minutes to Bed: Little Dinosaur by Rhiannon Fielding; Penguin
• David Attenborough and Martin Luther King, Jr by Isabel Sanchez Vegara; Frances Lincoln Children’s Books
• Mr Men Go Green by Adam Hargreaves; Egmont UK
• The Proudest Blue: A Story of Hijab and Family by Ibtihaj Muhammad; Andersen Press
• I Like To Be Kind by Campbell Books; Pan Macmillan
• Don’t Worry, Little Crab by Chris Haughton; Candlewick Press
• Hello Friend! (2020) by Rebecca Cobb; Pan Macmillan
• Kind by Alison Green; Scholastic
• To the Moon and Back for You by Emilia Bechrakis; Penguin Random House
• Arlo The Lion Who Couldn’t Sleep by Catherine Raynor; Macmillan
• My Art Book of Happiness by Shana Gozansky; Phaidon
• The Go-Away Bird by Julia Donaldson; Macmillan Children’s Books
• Too Much Stuff by Emily Gravett; Macmillan
• Aalfred and Aalbert (a love story) by Morag Hood; Macmillan
• I’m Actually Really Grown-Up Now by Maisie Paradise Shearring; Macmillan
• Pablo and the Noisy Party by Pablo; Penguin

— The Independent