The Best Books About Mothers and Their Children

Ask a two-year-old where his mother went and you have the plot of roughly half the picture books ever printed: she left the room, the room got bigger, and everything now depends on her coming back. Children’s literature has been working that same small patch of ground for eighty years — a bunny who announces he is running away and a mother who calmly explains how she would follow, a hatchling interviewing a steam shovel, an Arctic girl testing exactly how much trouble love can absorb. The mothers in these books lose their tempers, go to work, pick blueberries on the far side of the hill, and come home.

Drawing from Bookroo’s collection of 742 books about mothers and their children, our editors chose thirteen that belong on a family shelf rather than a greeting-card rack. Start with the fixed shortlist below — board books for a baby shower, animal-mother read-alouds, first-day-of-school comfort, a family saving coins for a mother who waits tables, and a middle-grade novel about a mother who is hard to love — then browse the age shelves for babies, preschoolers, and independent readers, or follow the related topics toward our wider guide to books about moms, mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, or the rest of the family.