Kindness & friendship · Text Set

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Kindness books get read to children constantly and mostly ask nothing of them. This set is ordered by difficulty instead: it starts where kindness is easy and free, moves to kindness that is inconvenient, then to being kind to someone you find strange, then to organised effort — and ends with a street answering a broken window.

The question that runs through all five

When does being kind actually cost you something?

Standards status

This curated reading sequence is not itself a region-specific standards claim. Review the documentary status on any linked lesson plan.

Set worksheet (PDF) — the worksheet is one row per book, filled in after each one.

The sequence

Start here. One minute.

When We Are Kind

Book ID 7707

Monique Gray Smith

Gr K-1Concept / WordlessTL081 min

Simple repeated text naming every direction kindness travels — family, friends, Elders, animals, the earth, and back to yourself. Nothing is at stake yet, which is exactly right for a first book: it gives the class the word before it gives them the problem.

AskIt ends with being kind to yourself. Is that the same kind of kindness as the rest?

Now it is inconvenient.

Bink and Gollie: Give a Fish a Home

Book ID 6903

Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee

Gr K-3FictionTL06510L4 min

Bink brings home a fish and declares him a marvellous companion; Gollie disagrees, and Fred complicates pancakes, films and skating. The first book where being kind to one friend costs the other one something.

AskGollie is right about the fish. Does that make her wrong about Bink?

Now to someone you find strange.

Two Speckled Eggs

Book ID 7028

Jennifer K. Mann

Gr K-3FictionTL075 min

Ginger does not want to invite quiet, odd Lyla Browning to her birthday, and the party she planned falls apart anyway — and Lyla turns out to be the guest who matters. The hardest jump in the set, and it is only three books in.

AskGinger's party went wrong. Would she have noticed Lyla if it had gone right?

Now organise it.

Helping Out is Cool

Book ID 4697

Ellen Feinman Moss

Gr K-2Non-fictionTL065 min

A neighbourhood garden, breakfast served, books recorded for readers who cannot see print. Kindness stops being a feeling between two people and becomes something people schedule and turn up for.

AskThese people had to plan and show up. Is that still kindness, or is it work?

Now when it is dangerous.

A Light in the Darkness

Book ID 4526

Aaron Zevy

Gr 2-5FictionTL076 minOpen lessons

Willie tells how a rock went through his Jewish neighbour Josh's window at Hanukkah, and how a whole street answered with light. Kindness as a public act against hate, told by a friend. This title has a full lesson plan.

AskOne window was broken. Why did it take a whole street to answer it?

Also in the collection

What MattersBook ID 7378One dropped can, and everything it reaches. Two minutes.

A Chanukah NoelBook ID 6129A Jewish girl in France turns holiday envy into generosity.

Ira Crumb Feels the FeelingsBook ID 7370Ira Crumb, left out, with his feelings making feelings of their own.

SuperluminousBook ID 7719A glowing girl who learns that light is for sharing.

Teaching this set

The order is a cost curve. Book 1 asks nothing, book 5 asks a family to stand in a window where a rock came through. A class that reads them in this order can be asked at the end which of the five they could actually do — and the answers will not all be book 1.

A Light in the Darkness has a full twenty-module lesson plan, so this set can close into directed work. It also needs the most care in the room: the rock is real, and the book does not soften it.