The best children’s pictures books about love
A common request I receive from parents is to help them find books to help them talk to their children about love!
Love can be a tricky thing to explain to children. It is a complicated emotion that can mean a lot of different things. And when kids start asking big questions like ‘What’s love?’ or ‘How do I know that I love someone?’, answering them isn’t always easy. Plus, the answer is often based on your feelings and personal experiences.
Picture books about love can be a great way to start the conversation. And can help you to explain love in a way that is meaningful and logical to your child!
Now, while hunting around for books to include, I found these great tips on how to talk to kids about love by Lauren Barineau.
- Love is universal and beyond romantic attraction. When talking about love with kids, make sure you talk about all the ways we experience love: familial love, love between close friends, love of pets, romantic love and others.
- Use age-appropriate, but concrete words to describe love. Love is often described as a simile (i.e., love is like…), but pushing yourself to define it in easy-to-understand words may be more helpful. Consider a few examples below:
- Love is having very strong feelings of liking someone and enjoying spending time with them.
- Love means caring about someone or something a lot and feeling like your best self with them.
- You know you love someone when you really like them, you want the best things for them, and when you feel safe with them.
- Love is likely defined differently for each person and family. Explore some ways that different people may feel and demonstrate love. This is also a chance to explain that some behaviours are never an acceptable part of love (like neglect or abuse).
- Consider contextualizing love with specifics that your child may understand. For example, “Think about how much you like playing with your brother and how you always want to make sure he’s safe when you’re outside together. That is a way you show him you love him.”
- For older kids, tease out the difference between liking something and loving something. Liking may be enjoying something but loving means you like that thing with an intensity, or strong passion over other things. How might you relate that idea to people? Love often has other feelings involved beyond just “liking it”, but instead may include trust, respect, or similarity in values or personality. Invite older kids to share their thoughts on what it means to love something.
Find practical tools to educate kids about sex education in the Sex Ed Shop
If you’re looking for a book on a different topic, look at my main list of sex education books for children. It includes over 40+ topics!
You’ll also find more information about sex education on my Sex Education 101 page.
NOTE: Before passing any book to your child or reading it with them, you should read it yourself first. I might think it is a great book for a certain age child or that the information is valuable, but you may disagree. Try to choose books that reflect your values and the messages you want your child to receive.
Picture books about love
You’ll find an age-specific list of children’s books about love. All of the books on this topic are currently showing.
All of the ages are visible, regardless of whether they’re relevant (or not). If no books appear for your chosen age, then it means there aren’t any relevant books.
To find relevant books for your child’s age, click on their age, and the appropriate books will appear.
If no books appear, there aren’t any books for a child of that age.
Looking for more sex education resources? Then visit my Sex Education 101 page!
These are some of the many picture books for children about love. As I find more, I will add them to this list. They are all really good books that you will find useful for starting conversations about love in families.
Oh, and please do let me know if you know of a book to be added to this list!
Happy reading!
❤️ Cath