Why are the heroes of children's books so often animals?

Because an animal has no age, gender or background that sets it apart from the child: every child can step into its shoes. There's also distance: a quarrel between mice can be watched without feeling it's about you. That's why difficult subjects so often have an animal on the cover.

Do children learn less from talking animals?

For two goals, research points that way. After a story about sharing, preschool children gave more with human characters than with humanised animals. And about an unfamiliar animal, the youngest remembered fewer facts from the humanised version. On enjoyment, language and rhythm, these studies say nothing.

Which animal book for which age?

From two, books to touch and join in with, like The Very Hungry Caterpillar or Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, both rated from two by Common Sense Media. From three, a sing-along like Pete the Cat. From seven, according to Common Sense Media, Charlotte's Web.

Do animal books help with difficult subjects?

Yes, thanks to distance: a child can talk about a fox's fear before talking about their own. When a story is about a behaviour your child should adopt themselves, the available results rather favour a human hero.

Theme · Animals

Children's books about animals: six books, and a surprising finding

6 checked books · 3 sources

The caterpillar, the bear, the tiger, the pig: animals carry a large share of children's books. Here are six books checked with their publisher and the age given, why animals work so well as heroes, and a research finding rarely mentioned: for some kinds of learning, human characters do better than talking animals.

Why animals

An animal has no age, gender, skin colour or background that would set it apart from the child. A rabbit in a striped jumper is nobody in particular, and that's exactly why every child can step into its shoes. It's the practical reason publishers have come back to animals for generations.

There's also distance. A quarrel between mice happens far enough away for a child to watch without feeling it's about them. That's why difficult subjects, death, anger, being left out, so often have an animal on the cover.

Both reasons still hold. What doesn't hold is the idea that talking animals work just as well as humans in every respect. More on that below.

Six animal books, from 2 to 7

Roughly in order of age. The age comes from BookTrust or Common Sense Media and is named for each book.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Eric Carle · Puffin, 1969 · BookTrust: interest age 2 to 5; Common Sense Media: age 2+
A caterpillar eats its way through the week, one more food each day, until it becomes a butterfly. You count, name the days and poke a finger through the holes.
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
Bill Martin Jr., illustrated by Eric Carle · Henry Holt, 1967 · Common Sense Media: age 2+
A question, an animal, the next question. One of the first books children can “read” along with you, because the pattern never changes.
We're Going on a Bear Hunt
Michael Rosen, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury · Walker Books · BookTrust: interest age 2+, reading age 6+
A family goes looking for a bear, through grass, river and mud, and finds one. Sounds to join in on every page, and a chase home at the end.
The Tiger Who Came to Tea
Judith Kerr · HarperCollins, 1968 · BookTrust: interest age 2+, reading age 6+
A tiger comes to tea and eats everything in the house. The animal as a surprise visitor, and a family that takes it in its stride.
Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes
Eric Litwin, illustrated by James Dean · HarperCollins · Common Sense Media: age 3+
A cat whose new shoes keep changing colour, and who keeps singing anyway. A book children end up singing.
Charlotte's Web
E. B. White, illustrated by Garth Williams · Harper & Brothers, 1952 · Common Sense Media: age 7+
A pig saved by a spider who writes words in her web. For older children: a first novel about friendship, and about death.

The finding that goes against habit

Talking animals are often seen as the best way to teach children something. Two studies suggest otherwise, for two specific goals.

Sharing. Larsen, Lee and Ganea read preschool children a story about sharing, once with human characters, once with humanised animals. After the human version, children gave significantly more. After the animal version and after a control story, they gave less. Among children who heard the animal version, those who credited the animals with human qualities tended to share more.¹³

Knowledge about real animals. Ganea and her colleagues showed children books about an unfamiliar animal, once with factual language and realistic pictures, once with humanised language and a dressed-up animal. The humanised version led the youngest to remember less, and to credit real animals with human qualities more readily.²

What follows. Animal books keep their place: the Very Hungry Caterpillar is still the Very Hungry Caterpillar. The consequence is more practical. When a story is meant to teach a behaviour, sharing, comforting, settling a quarrel, the results favour a human hero. And when a child is meant to learn about hedgehogs, a hedgehog without a hat is the better choice.

Or a story of their own

If your child should be the hero

Your child finds an injured animal in the garden and has to work out what it eats, where it sleeps and when it can manage on its own.
One night, a zoo takes in an animal nobody knows. Your child is the only one patient enough to watch it.
Your child looks after the neighbours' pet for a week and discovers that feeding it is the smallest part of the job.

Create a book about animals

Frequently asked questions

Why are the heroes of children's books so often animals?: Because an animal has no age, gender or background that sets it apart from the child: every child can step into its shoes. There's also distance: a quarrel between mice can be watched without feeling it's about you. That's why difficult subjects so often have an animal on the cover.
Do children learn less from talking animals?: For two goals, research points that way. After a story about sharing, preschool children gave more with human characters than with humanised animals. And about an unfamiliar animal, the youngest remembered fewer facts from the humanised version. On enjoyment, language and rhythm, these studies say nothing.
Which animal book for which age?: From two, books to touch and join in with, like The Very Hungry Caterpillar or Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, both rated from two by Common Sense Media. From three, a sing-along like Pete the Cat. From seven, according to Common Sense Media, Charlotte's Web.
Do animal books help with difficult subjects?: Yes, thanks to distance: a child can talk about a fox's fear before talking about their own. When a story is about a behaviour your child should adopt themselves, the available results rather favour a human hero.

Sources

1.Larsen, N. E., Lee, K. and Ganea, P. A. (2018): Do storybooks with anthropomorphized animal characters promote prosocial behaviors in young children? Developmental Science 21(3).What it confirms: After a story about sharing with human characters, preschool children gave significantly more than after the same story with humanised animals.
2.Ganea, P. A., Canfield, C. F., Simons-Ghafari, K. and Chou, T. (2014): Do cavies talk? The effect of anthropomorphic picture books on children's knowledge about animals. Frontiers in Psychology 5:283.What it confirms: Humanised language and pictures led the youngest children to remember less about an unfamiliar animal and to credit real animals with human qualities more readily.
3.Larsen, Lee and Ganea (2018), full text at the Language and Learning Lab, University of Toronto.What it confirms: The procedure, sample and full results of the study on sharing.

Other themes: Autumn, Dinosaurs, Rabbits, Moles, Elephants, Witches, Unicorns and Fire engines. Read also: Naming feelings and When a pet dies. Or children's books by age, growing up, topic by topic and all the illustration styles.