Books for 6 Year Old Girls

Why it worksEach animal loses something, finds it, and asks 'Is there room on the broom for a dog like me?' - four times, with the same closing rhyme, so children join in on the question and then supply 'Yes!' before the witch does. The dragon chase gives it a real third act, which most rhyming picture books lack.

Why it worksWemberly's worries are listed in specific, small, real detail - the crack in the wall, the radiator - so an anxious child hears their own kind of worrying named out loud, and the fix is not 'stop worrying' but one friend who worries too.

Why it worksLilly is magnificently, unapologetically horrible about the new baby - she tells him the alphabet is wrong on purpose - and only defends him when a cousin insults him. Older siblings recognise that exact contradiction in themselves and laugh instead of being told off.

Worth knowingLilly's behaviour is funny rather than punished; some parents would rather not hand a four-year-old the material.

Why it worksThis is the other side of the move - Daniela is the one being left behind - and it spends its length on the last ordinary afternoon of playing rather than on the goodbye itself. The two apartments being 'the same but different' is the line children repeat back.

Why it worksThe anger is drawn rather than explained - the outlines go red and orange and Sophie roars a red roar - and then she runs, climbs a tree and comes back when she is ready. It models leaving the room to cool down, which is a strategy a four-year-old can actually copy.

Why it worksPrincess Magnolia leaves a tea party through a broom-cupboard chute to fight a monster, then goes back before anyone notices. It solves a specific problem - a child who wants a princess book and a monster book at once - and the double life is the joke, not the moral.

Worth knowingATOS 3.2 makes it a read-aloud for most fives rather than a solo read. The monsters are comic rather than frightening, but the illustrations are dark-toned and a few children read the cover as scary.

Why it worksIt is Magnolia's birthday and she has to keep leaving her own party to fight monsters, while twelve princesses notice she keeps disappearing. Tighter than book one because the clock is running, and the near-misses give a five-year-old the specific pleasure of knowing more than the characters do.

Worth knowingFunnier if you have read book one - the broom-cupboard chute and Blacky the pony are not re-explained.

Why it worksDory's older siblings refuse to play with her, so she has an imaginary monster friend, an imaginary villain and a fairy godmother, and the book takes all three completely seriously. The drawings are scribbly enough that a child believes Dory drew them, and the youngest-sibling frustration is the truest thing in this whole set.

Worth knowingThe line between Dory's imagination and the real world is deliberately never drawn, which a literal child finds unsettling rather than delightful. Her siblings are properly mean for most of the book.

Why it worksPhoebe skips a stone off a unicorn's head, is granted a wish, and wishes for the unicorn to be her best friend - who turns out to be magnificently vain. It is a newspaper-style comic strip collection, so the unit is four panels rather than a chapter, which suits a child who reads in two-minute bursts.

Worth knowingATOS 3.4 with a lot of dry, adult-shaped irony - Marigold's vanity jokes land better at eight than six. Being a strip collection, there is no plot to pull a reader through.

Why it worksTold to dust the furniture, Amelia Bedelia covers it in dusting powder; told to draw the drapes, she sketches them. Every joke is one idiom taken literally, which is precisely the language skill a five- or six-year-old is acquiring - children laugh here because they have just worked out that words do two jobs.

Worth knowingThe humour dies completely if the child does not know the idiom, so several jokes need explaining, which flattens them. Amelia Bedelia is a domestic servant taking orders from her employers, and the 1963 framing shows.

Why it worksVashti says she cannot draw, so her teacher tells her to make a mark and sign it - and the framed dot on the wall the next day does the whole argument in one picture. The last page hands the same instruction to another child, which children reliably read as being handed to them.

Why it worksTwo hundred and eighty-one words, one line a page, built on the repeated vow 'we stand' - short enough to chant and slow enough to look at. Goade's water fills whole spreads in a single colour, so a five-year-old following the black snake across the pages is tracking the plot visually rather than through the text.

Worth knowingThe black snake is a pipeline. Children ask what it is, and the answer is a real conflict - decide before you start how much you want to say.

Why it worksIt is structured as school years - Year One flying, Year Two roaring - with Zog earning a gold star each time, so a child starting school recognises the shape of it. Princess Pearl refusing to be rescued and becoming a doctor is the twist that makes parents keep it in the pile.

Worth knowingPublished in the US as A Gold Star for Zog, so US buyers searching the UK title will not find it.

Why it worksTwo speech bubbles a page, colour-coded per character, so a new reader can carry Piggie's lines while you do Gerald's - it turns decoding into acting. The escalation from one bird to a nest of birds gets the same belly laugh on the fifteenth read.

Why it worksGerald's 'GROAN!' gets bigger on every page until it fills the spread, so a child who cannot yet read still knows exactly how loud to be - and the wordless starfield payoff at the end lands even when they have seen it before.

Why it worksA mouse dentist treats a fox with toothache knowing he may well be eaten for it, and beats him with glue - so the child spends the book worrying about the dentist's safety instead of their own. Every instrument and procedure is shown matter-of-factly on the way past, which does the desensitising invisibly.

Worth knowingThe vocabulary is genuinely hard (extracted, unbearable, morsel) and the fox openly plans to eat the De Sotos. It suits five and six far more than three.

Why it worksOne image does the whole job: a string of love running from your heart to everyone you miss, which stretches to an uncle who has died and equally to the nursery door at half past eight. Families end up using the phrase daily at drop-off long after the book goes back on the shelf.

Worth knowingIt mentions heaven, and the idea is restated rather than dramatised - some children experience it as a lesson rather than a story.

Why it worksThe mouse's description of the gruffalo is recited twice - once as a lie, once with the real gruffalo standing there - so a child who has heard it once can chant 'terrible tusks, and terrible claws' with you, and gets the joke of the second telling. The couplets are metrically tight enough that a stumble is obvious, which is why it survives the fortieth reading.

Worth knowingThe gruffalo reveal is genuinely startling for sensitive two- and three-year-olds; the reassurance only arrives several pages later.

Why it worksThe list pages - 'the towering icebergs and far-off lands' - are the most vocabulary-dense thing Donaldson wrote, and a five-year-old will start using words like 'shimmering' after a few readings. The snail's tiny trail message saving the whale gives small children a competence fantasy that actually pays off.

Worth knowingLonger and more descriptive than the Gruffalo, with less refrain to hang on to; under-threes tend to drift in the middle.

Why it worksFive separate short chapters, so you can read one and stop - the natural bridge between picture books and chapter books. 'The Letter', where Frog sends Toad a letter by snail and they wait four days for it, is the one children ask for.

Worth knowingThe longest book in this set - over twenty minutes end to end - and gentle where children who want jokes and volume find it flat next to Elephant & Piggie. Read one chapter, not five.

Why it worksEvery animal tells Jim Panzee to cheer up and he gets crosser with each one, until Norman just sits next to him in silence - the book's whole argument is that you are allowed to be in a bad mood for no reason. Parents find it changes how they respond, not just the child.