When I was teaching, I saw a lot of animal obsessions over the years. Everything from horses to axolotls.
And finding a book that meets your little reader’s animal obsession can be hard.
Luckily, we’ve got over 250 children’s animal books further down this page, and these are the eight I’d start with.
Some of these have sad bits, so I’ve said so on each one.
Animal stories for younger children
Peter Rabbit’s sisters go and pick blackberries, and Peter squeezes under the gate into the garden he was told to keep out of.
He eats lettuces, French beans and radishes, goes looking for parsley and meets Mr McGregor.
The Beatrix Potter Illustrated Collection gathers her animal stories together. Animals get eaten in them and it’s said plainly, and Peter’s father ended up in a pie.
Beatrix Potter – Illustrated Collection
Fern is eight, and her father has gone out with an axe to do away with the runt of a litter born in the night.
She takes hold of the axe and won’t let go, so he gives in, and she calls the piglet Wilbur.
Charlotte’s Web is by E. B. White. It opens with a man walking out to kill a newborn animal, and Fern argues her case at the breakfast table.
Charlotte’s Web
Mr Fox lives in a hole under a huge tree with Mrs Fox and their four Small Foxes, and every evening he trots down into the valley and helps himself.
Then one night the three farmers wait right outside his hole, with the wind blowing the wrong way.
Fantastic Mr Fox is by Roald Dahl. They shoot, Mr Fox loses his tail, and the farmers start digging out the hole with the whole family down there. There’s more Dahl in my best Roald Dahl books.
Fantastic Mr Fox
Dog, cat and horse books for children
Nobody in Trevor’s family will walk Streaker, who is part greyhound and part rocket.
Then Mum offers him thirty pounds to walk her every day of the Easter holidays, and his first bright idea is roller skates.
The Hundred-Mile-an-Hour Dog is by Jeremy Strong. Charlie Smugg is thirteen and a proper bully, and he’s there from early on. His other books are in my best Jeremy Strong books.
The Hundred-Mile-an-Hour Dog
Johnny Trott is fourteen and a bellboy at the Savoy when Countess Kandinsky arrives from Moscow with a cat howling in a basket.
Kaspar is jet black from whiskers to paws, and Johnny is to feed him, talk to him and take him out twice a day.
Kaspar the Titanic Cat is by Michael Morpurgo. Something happens to the Countess at the hotel, and the story ends up on board the Titanic. There’s more in my best Michael Morpurgo books.
Kaspar the Titanic Cat
Charlie Bass lives on a dairy farm, and she learned to ride on a very patient cow called Ermintrude.
At a horse sale she waves to her friend Polly across the ring, and the auctioneer thinks it’s a bid.
The Racehorse Who Wouldn’t Gallop is by Clare Balding. Some girls at school call Charlie a cow, and it stings. I’ve got more in my children’s horse and pony books.
The Racehorse Who Wouldn’t Gallop
Wild animal stories for children
Ivan is a silverback gorilla, and his home is a glass box at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade.
He draws with crayons and his pictures sell in the gift shop, and then a baby elephant called Ruby arrives in the back of a truck.
The One and Only Ivan is by Katherine Applegate. It’s sad in places. Ruby was chained up at her old circus, and she says humans killed her family.
The One and Only Ivan
Fiver is the smallest rabbit in the Sandleford warren, and one May evening he finds a new board by the gate and starts to shake.
His big brother Hazel believes him, so they slip away one moonlit night with a handful of others.
Watership Down is by Richard Adams. The rabbits fight with teeth and claws, Fiver’s visions are frightening, and one old phrase about race jars today.
Watership Down
More animal books for children
That’s my eight. Scroll down for the rest of the shelf, all hand-picked like these. If cats are their thing, I’ve got books like Warrior Cats, and for reading out loud there are my family read aloud books.
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