The 10 Best Big Brother Books for Toddlers (2026)
By the Little Hero Book team · Updated
A new baby is good news for everyone in the house except, sometimes, the person who was the baby until last week. He can't tell you what's bothering him, and asking him directly usually gets you nothing. A book gets at it sideways.
We read a lot of these. Ten worth owning are below. Two of them are older than most of the parents buying them, a couple exist mainly to be chewed, and one has your own son in the illustrations. (Shopping for a girl? Here's our big sister book list and the personalized big sister book. Most of the classics below have a sister edition as well.)
Quick picks
- Best overall: A personalized big brother book starring your son
- Best board book: I Am a Big Brother by Caroline Jayne Church
- Best classic: Peter's Chair by Ezra Jack Keats
- Best during pregnancy: There's a House Inside My Mummy by Giles Andreae
- Best for a laugh: The New Small Person by Lauren Child
1. Your Own Personalized Big Brother Book
Little Hero Book · Ages 2 to 8
Every other book on this list stars somebody else's kid. This one stars yours. You upload a photo and your son turns up in "The Loudest House", where the new baby won't stop crying and he's the only one with a plan. He's four, the baby has been home three weeks, and he has worked out that attention is finite. A book where he's the one solving the problem is a different proposition from a book about some other boy.
Best for: A brother who has noticed the attention is finite.
Create His Book · $34.992. I Am a Big Brother
Caroline Jayne Church · Ages 1 to 4
Church's brother edition, and the one you're most likely to be handed at a baby shower. The drawing style is everywhere by now, big heads and simple shapes, and the pages hold up to a two year old. It reads in about a minute. There is no conflict in it anywhere, on purpose.
Best for: Baby showers and first birthdays.
3. I'm a Big Brother
Joanna Cole · Ages 2 to 5
This is the one that gets bought for you. Cole is straight about the fact that a toddler can love the baby and resent him in the same afternoon, and there's a page of notes for parents at the back covering the first few weeks.
Best for: Parents who want the notes in the back.
4. Peter's Chair
Ezra Jack Keats · Ages 3 to 5
1967, and it holds up because Keats took the jealousy seriously. Peter watches his crib and his high chair get painted pink for the new baby, grabs the one chair they haven't got to yet, and runs away with it — as far as the front stoop. Then he tries to sit in it and doesn't fit. He's outgrown it. He carries it back inside and helps paint it pink, and Keats never once explains what that means.
Best for: The big brother who is not thrilled about any of this.
5. The New Small Person
Lauren Child · Ages 3 to 6
Elmore Green was perfectly happy as an only child, thank you. Then a new small person arrives, licks his jelly beans, and shows no sign of leaving. Child's artwork does a lot of the work here, and the ending earns itself without a speech. It plays as comedy at five and would just be confusing at two.
Best for: Kids who take a joke better than they take reassurance.
6. You Were the First
Patricia MacLachlan · Ages 2 to 5
There is almost no baby in this one. It's a list of firsts belonging to the older child — first smile, first word, first everything — and the point is that all of it happened before anybody else showed up. Buy it for yourself as much as for him.
Best for: You, mostly.
7. My New Baby
Rachel Fuller · Ages 1 to 3
Board book, nearly wordless. A toddler watches the baby get fed, get changed, get put down for a nap. Since there's no text to be faithful to, you end up telling it yourself, which means your own names go in and you can skip whichever part isn't going well this week.
Best for: Pre-verbal, and for nights when you can't face reading properly.
8. There's a House Inside My Mummy
Giles Andreae · Ages 2 to 5
For the months before. A boy explains the house inside his mummy where the baby is living, in rhyme simple enough that he'll be saying it along with you by the fourth read. It also covers the part where mummy feels sick, which most pregnancy books leave out.
Best for: The months before the birth.
9. The Berenstain Bears' New Baby
Stan & Jan Berenstain · Ages 3 to 7
Small Bear has outgrown his bed, Papa goes off to build him a new one, and it turns out somebody smaller is about to need the old one. The Berenstain house style is either your childhood or it isn't. If it isn't, this won't convert you. If it is, he'll sit through it happily and so will you.
Best for: Families who grew up on Bear Country themselves.
10. Big Brothers Are the Best
Fran Manushkin · Ages 2 to 5
Enthusiasm from start to finish. He shows the baby his toys, makes faces at him, helps at bath time. If your son is genuinely pleased about all this, and some of them are, the books further up this list will only be planting ideas.
Best for: The son who is already delighted.
Big Brother Books by Age
Big brother books for 2 year olds
Two year olds hold books upside down and lose interest around the ninety-second mark, so the physical object matters as much as the story does. "I Am a Big Brother" and "My New Baby" both survive. Fuller's is nearly wordless, which means you're improvising anyway and can put your own family's names in. Don't bother with Peter's Chair yet. The jealousy it's about hasn't turned up, and if it has, he can't follow a plot long enough to reach the resolution.
Big brother books for 3 year olds
Three is when most parents come looking for these, and it's when "Peter's Chair" starts to work. A crib being repainted for somebody else is a concrete, visible injustice, and concrete is the only kind a three year old can hold in his head. If the baby is still on the way, "There's a House Inside My Mummy" is the better buy. The rhyme sticks, and he'll recite it back at you in the car.
Big brother books for 4 and 5 year olds
From four he can follow a real plot and take a joke at his own expense, which is what "The New Small Person" runs on. Elmore Green losing his only-child status is funny at five in a way it isn't at two. "The Berenstain Bears' New Baby" suits the same age, provided Bear Country already means something in your house. By five or six he'll be reading to the baby himself.
How to Choose a Big Brother Book
Timing matters more than which title you land on. During the pregnancy you want a baby-is-coming story, which is There's a House Inside My Mummy. At the birth, switch to something that makes a fuss of him specifically, so a personalized book or Big Brothers Are the Best. Then leave the jealousy books alone until the jealousy shows up, usually around week three or four, once the visitors have stopped coming and the novelty has worn off. Peter's Chair is no use to a boy who isn't feeling it yet.
After that it comes down to his age, and that narrows things more than parents expect. The breakdown above splits the list by what actually holds a two year old, a three year old, and a four or five year old.
Big Brother Book FAQ
When should I give my toddler a big brother book?
As soon as you've told him, which for most people is somewhere in the second trimester. The point is repetition across months, so that by the time the baby actually arrives the idea has gone boring. Hold one book back for homecoming day, though. He should have something to unwrap that day too.
What age are big brother books for?
One to five, broadly, since that's the window most siblings arrive in. The gap between what works at two and what works at four is wider than the age range makes it sound, which is why the list above is split up. A personalized book stretches across more of that range than the rest, because the story gets written to his age.
Should the big brother book be a gift "from the baby"?
Yes, and it's worth doing properly — write the label in handwriting he won't recognize as yours. On the day you bring the baby home, every visitor in the house is going to walk straight past him to get to the newborn. A present that came from the baby gives him a reason to be interested in the baby.