The Best Angel Books for Kids

Angels turn up in children’s books doing one of three jobs. They carry news—and almost always have to open with some version of don’t be afraid, which tells you how the arrival tends to go. They stand watch, unseen, at the foot of a bed, in the stories families tell a child about who is looking after them. And once in a while one shows up filthy and rude behind the tea chests in a garage, living on aspirin and takeout, refusing to explain itself. The costume is the easiest one in the pageant—a bedsheet, tinsel, cardboard wings—but the idea underneath is one of the biggest a picture book ever takes on.

Bookroo’s collection of angel books really covers three different shelves, and this page keeps them straight: the Christmas books, where the angel is Gabriel and the story is the Nativity; the devotional books families reach for at a baptism or a first Communion, which say plainly what their tradition holds; and the novels—secular, strange, frequently excellent—where something winged arrives in an ordinary English garage or a Swiss bell tower and nobody can agree what to call it. Start with our fixed shortlist of 12 favorites, then browse by age. The shelves stop at middle grade on purpose; the enormous teen shelf of angel romances is a different reader entirely.