Reading list
The Best Buddhist Books for Kids
A hand-curated, honest list of eight children's books on Buddhism — from breathing-practice books for ages 3 to a Newbery-medal chapter book for 12. Includes the genre-defining children's mindfulness book.
Buddhist books for children, taken together, do a much better job of treating both the tradition and the reader with respect than Buddhist books for adults do. There is a particular tonal range — quiet, slow, parable-driven, illustrated with warmth — that has produced some of the genuinely best children’s books of the last forty years. Zen Shorts, The Cat Who Went to Heaven, and Each Breath a Smile are each among the strongest picture books in their respective decades, and the fact that all three are Buddhist is not a coincidence.
This list ranges from a board-book-adjacent breathing-practice book for 3-year-olds (Each Breath a Smile) to a 60-page Newbery-medal novel for 8–12 year olds (The Cat Who Went to Heaven). The order is loosely by age band, youngest first — but every entry on this list also rewards adult readers, which is one of the marks of a real Buddhist children’s book.
If you are buying for a single child, get the one matched to their age and add the next one each year. If you are buying for a household with mixed ages, Zen Shorts and Each Breath a Smile are the two everyone reads aloud together. The biographies of the Buddha — Under the Bodhi Tree and Demi’s Buddha — both belong on the same shelf eventually; Under the Bodhi Tree is the easier entry point and Demi’s version is the more visually serious.
- 1
Each Breath a Smile
A small, soft introduction to mindful breathing for very young children, written by Thich Nhat Hanh and adapted from a verse he often taught at his Plum Village retreats. The first Buddhist practice book most American children encounter.
- 2
Sitting Still Like a Frog
The genre-defining children's mindfulness book, by a Dutch educator working in the secular-mindfulness lineage of Jon Kabat-Zinn. Over a million copies sold worldwide. The book parents actually use, not the book parents buy and shelve.
- 3
Zen Shorts
A giant panda named Stillwater arrives in three siblings' garden and tells each of them a Zen story drawn from the Buddhist and Daoist tradition. Watercolour illustrations of unusual delicacy. Caldecott Honor.
- 4
The Three Questions
A young boy named Nikolai is trying to answer three questions — when is the right time to do things, who is the most important person, and what is the right thing to do. His friends each give him an answer. Then a wounded panda named Leo enters the story, and Nikolai discovers the answers by living them. Based on a Tolstoy parable, rendered with a Zen sensibility.
- 5
Under the Bodhi Tree: A Story of the Buddha
A clean, picture-book biography of Siddhartha Gautama from sheltered prince to the Bodhi tree to the first sermon. The most readable English-language Buddha biography in print for young children, with watercolour illustrations that match the quiet tone.
- 6
The Brave Little Parrot
A single Jataka tale — the Buddha as a parrot, flying back and forth to a burning forest with droplets of water on his wings — rendered as a picture book by one of the strongest folktale retellers writing in English.
- 7
Buddha
Demi's gold-leaf illustrated biography of the Buddha, in the same tradition as her later illustrated lives of Mother Teresa and Gandhi. A picture book that doubles as an art object.
- 8
The Cat Who Went to Heaven
A poor Japanese painter is commissioned to paint a temple scroll of the Buddha's death surrounded by the animals who came to bid him farewell. His housekeeper brings home a small white cat. Newbery Medal winner, 1931 — the second Newbery ever awarded, and still one of the most quietly perfect.
