Grades
PreK - 5
Best Books to Build Student Resilience
These hand-picked titles will aid in building student resilience during classroom story time and beyond.
Every student has a tough day at school every now and then. But learning how to manage frustration and be resilient is key to any child’s mental growth and social-emotional learning.
When students experience setbacks — whether it’s getting a bad grade on a test or not making the cut on the soccer team — it can negatively impact their mood. Using books with resilient characters is an excellent teaching tool that can help your students feel confident to move through whatever life may bring.
From enhancing students’ self awareness and promoting academic success to cultivating strong, positive relationships with others, developing resilience is critical for a child’s emotional health. Plus, it sets them up to thrive in and out of the classroom.
Here are some ways you can use books to help build resilience in your students.
Books are a great way to introduce coping strategies that help students overcome obstacles and manage negative thought patterns. Through engaging narratives, captivating illustrations, and relatable characters, books can teach students how to creatively solve their problems and develop resilience in the face of adversity.
“Reading about characters having difficulty helps students feel that they are not alone,” says Kathleen Sahagian, a first-grade teacher in California. “Books are also a great way to help students feel like they are not the only ones who have a bad day.”
Teachers can also use books to initiate conversations in the classroom about student resilience.
In The Bad Guys in the Baddest Day Ever (The Bad Guys #10), the heroes are defeated and need to work together with the International League of Heroes to save the world. This highlights the power of leaning on community in the toughest of times for cultivating resilience and support.
Meanwhile, Bad Hair Day teaches students coping skills to turn challenging experiences into learning opportunities, further encouraging growth in resilient students and fostering mental health.
Shop all books for building resilience below! You can find all books and activities at The Teacher Store.
Our heroes are down, defeated, and desperate. But in these darkest of times, unity is the only option.
When everything seems to be going wrong, Robert wonders if the Bad Fairy has tapped him with her wand.
In this contemporary classic, veteran children's author Viorst introduces us to Alexander, a kid with an unruly crop of hair, who gets out of bed to face a day that seems to grow increasingly worse with each passing minute.
Action-packed illustrations and dynamite rhyming text reveal the many ways superheroes (and ordinary children) can resist the super-temptation to cause a scene.
Camilla Cream is very worried about what other people think about her, but at the very moment she most wants to fit in, she becomes completely covered in colorful stripes!
Wemberly worried about one thing most of all: her first day of school. But when she meets a fellow worrywart in her class, Wemberly realizes that school is too much fun to waste time worrying!
When Lilly brings her purple plastic purse and its treasures to school and can't wait until sharing time, Mr. Slinger confiscates her prized possessions. Lilly's fury leads to revenge and then to remorse and she sets out to make amends.
Turn little pouts into big smiles! Mr. Pout-Pout Fish is nervously awaiting his first day of school, and he frets about not knowing how to write his name, how to draw shapes, and how to do math — until he's reassured that school is the perfect place to learn how to master all of these new skills.
On a day when everything seems to be going wrong, from cloudy skies to the cancellation of a favorite cartoon, a boy discovers what a difference his attitude can make.
Karen tries everything to make her day better, but nothing is going right and her bad luck just won't go away. Will this be the worst day ever?
