In our previous articles, we’ve talked about several topics on raising healthy children. Having a child can be a fulfilling experience, however it can also be challenging to raise healthy children. How do you teach children to eat right? Children tend to eat delicious food without regard for what’s healthy or what’s not. Fortunately, there’s several children’s books that can help any parent teach their child how to eat healthy and live healthy. We’ll cover both free and paid options of these children’s books.
Free children’s books
On the free children’s books side you can try:
1. The Academy For Health Superheroes is a free children’s book about health that you can download on this link which is co-written by a cardiologist and a lifestyle and preventive medicine expert (Dr. Agnes Electra Chelbinska and David W. Evans). The book teaches young toddlers some healthy eating, healthy vocabulary, and avoiding junk food in a fun way. The superheroes have to face against the Junk Food Monster and his minions. It’s ideal for toddlers age 5 and up but you can start them younger to develop a healthy vocabulary early on.
Paid children’s books
The next books cost you a bit but these are good to start with. Children need variety so after you finish some free children’s books, you can start them with the paid children’s books.
2. Gregory The Terrible Eater (paid) – Gregory is a goat that likes to eat healthy instead of the usual goat that likes to eat tires, old broken appliances, and everything else goats eat! The irony is that while Gregory wants to eat healthy, his parents want him to eat the opposite! The result is that kids will point out by themselves what’s wrong with the situation. Have some fun time with your child in this book with the roles of children and parents hilariously reversed. (Disclaimer: we receive a small 4% percent of commissions from Amazon sales if you buy from this link. The proceeds go to help teach children to be healthy in London and India.)
3. The Academy For Health Superheroes: The Heart (paid) – written by Dr. Agnes Electra Chlebinska and health expert David W. Evans. This is the longer version of the free Academy For Health Superheroes book with over 200 pages of adventure, workshop, and healthy lifestyle for children. This book is easily worth several children’s books because it has several sections for stories with workshops at the end of each story. Designed by a doctor and health expert who are known for their free Happy Bootcamps in the UK. If you enjoyed the free book, then you will also enjoy the paid version.
4. Dragons Love Tacos (paid) is a New York Times bestseller which is the "Dragons love Tacos." It is written by Adam Rubin, he is a New York best-selling author for eight books which includes this first book. He worked for a long time as a creative director in the advertising industry but he left it to be a full time writer.
We all love dragons as a kid, those legendary creatures which are huge and fly. They have scales and they spew fire. Dragons are present in various mythologies of different cultures around the world.
In this story, however, dragons love to party and they love tacos, so they love taco parties. The story has the narrator who tells about how to make the best taco party for dragons. They love tacos such as beef tacos, chicken tacos, big and small tacos.
A step by step process on how to make taco which will encourage dragons to join the party. They eat tacos with salsa and when the party ended, they accidentally had jalapenos on their salsa.
5. Secret Pizza Party (paid). Written by Adam Rubin. He is also the author of Dragons Love Tacos, a New York Times Best Selling author.
The story tells about Racoon who loves pizza. He likes the crispity crunchita crust, salty pepperoni-ness, sweet sweet tomato-ness and the gooey cheesy-ness. He is always being chased away from the restaurants where he eats his favourite food. This gives him the idea to plan a big secret pizza party. However, another bigger secret party is also happening.
The book is fun and can be read to your toddler since the illustrations are superb.
6. D.W. The Picky Eater (paid). Written by Marc Brown. This has a story which is good for your toddler since the story is about a picky eater. Sometimes our toddlers can also be picky when they eat especially when the taste is sour like citrus fruit.
The name of the main character is D.W. She is a picky eater who had been caught many times not eating her lunch or dinner.
At one time she threw tantrums when she found spinach in her salad because she disliked eating it. She barely ate anything when she was at her friend’s house. Since she is a picky eater, her family started going out to dinner without her and she was left alone at home with a babysitter.
The time came when it was the birthday of her Grandma Thora when she decided that she was ready to join her family. She also decided to try other food on the menu. She ordered poet pie and ate everything. Later she learned there was spinach inside the pie yet she still ate everything.
The story will teach lessons to our picky eating toddlers especially healthy food, vegetables, and even spinach! Find out what happened at Grandma Thora's birthday and what made D.W. eat her spinach pie.
7. Creepy Carrots (paid) by Aaron Reynolds. He is also a New York Times bestselling author and lives in Chicago with his wife, two kids, four cats and goldfishes.
The rabbit's name is Jasper Rabbit who loves carrots. Jasper particularly loves carrots, particularly those that grow in Crackenhooper Field because they are fatter, crisper and you can eat them for free. He loved eating those carrots on the way to school, during his Little League practice and even on his way home at night.
He loves carrots so much and he could never get enough of them. Until he noticed something strange: carrots are following him from Crackenhooper Field. He saw the creepy carrots creeping along the shed and on his wall.
By the end of the week, the creepy carrots were everywhere. He was creeped out by those carrots and so he made a plan to make sure no creepy carrots would ever escape from Crackenhooper Field patch again.
Although carrots that follow you around may sound creepy but carrots are a delicious source of vitamin A for our toddlers. We need to read the book and find out what Jasper did so the creepy carrots would no longer escape from the patch and stop them from following him around.
8. Rude Cakes (paid). The book is written by Rowbot Watkins. The author is a dad who likes to draw and tell stories. His wife calls him Rowboat but we do not know the reason why. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York.
This may be strange for a cake to be named as rude which is the title of the book. However, the characters of this story are really named Rude Cakes. Although the cakes look delicious with pink frosting, they are rude. They do not say please or thank you to the parents.
The story is hilarious and it has some twists and turns prepared for those who will read the book to completion. Rowboat Watkins has written a funny story about manners and tackling bullying while reminding us that changing our bad habits and bad attitudes can be possible.
9. Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun: Having the Courage To Be Who You Are (paid). This book is written by Maria Dismondy, an award-winning author for children's books and her goal is to make a difference through her writing.
The main character of the story is Lucy. She is teased by Ralph at school because she is different. Ralph makes fun of her hair by calling her a poodle. Her lunch is spaghetti in a hot dog bun which he calls “stinky”. The worst he did was sending Lucy a bag full of dog treats.
However, Lucy knows everyone should be kind to everybody.
Lucy's kindness has made a twist at the ending but we won’t spoil the ending for you. The story is a very nice one to read to our toddlers. It is about how in spite of being treated unfairly, we can still rise up and be kind to those people who didn’t treat us fairly.
10. Listening to my body (paid). The book is written by Gabi Garcia, a mother. She is a licensed professional counselor and former teacher. She beleives it is a lifelong gift when you empower children to tune in and trust their bodies. She was also a therapist and agrees we should teach what we most need to learn.
Gabi Garcia is a mama, Licensed Professional Counselor and former teacher who believes in empowering children and that the ability of tuning into it and trusting their bodies is a lifelong gift. She has worked as a therapist in a variety of settings for over 15 years and currently works as a public school counselor.
This book is a good book to read to our toddlers. It is an engaging and interactive illustration book. It teaches our children to pay attention to their bodies.
By mixing a story and simple experiential activities, the story will guide our children through the process of noticing and naming their feelings while they develop a better sense of well-being. There are vocabularies to learn in the story such as "buzzing", "wiggly" and "squirmy". These will give them a name to what they feel and tell them that it is okay to feel this way.
The book teaches children to care for and be kind to themselves especially when they feel difficult emotions.
This is a good story which we need to finish to the end. Gabi Garcia has a unique way of giving a name to the sensations that children and adults feel.
More Free Resources For Parents And Teachers To Guide Toddlers Towards Health
These 10 children’s books are a good place to start to teach your kids how to live healthy and how to live happy. Each book has its own strengths and focuses on a different area.
However, if you want more resources to guide your children towards healthy and happy lifestyle you can check our free resources here:
The 18 Dangerous Trends In Children’s Health And How You Can Prevent Them – this discusses the dangerous health problems with today’s society and how children are being affected by those problems. Once you know what the problems are, you can take the steps to protect your child.
9 Ways To Keep Your Child Healthy – an excellent article on ways that you can protect your child in today’s time that addresses the problems discussed in the 18 dangerous health trends in children.
Teaching Your Child To Be Grateful – a good way to start teaching your child how to be grateful, which will develop their emotional intelligence and grit as well as appreciation for family and life in general. Being grateful helps counter depression which is a growing epidemic all over the world that is linked to obesity, diseases due to chronic stress, and suicide.
The Children’s Book With A Moral Lesson – a feature on the 200-page Children’s book with a moral lesson, you can also download the free 30 page ebook on the Homepage of the website too!
Free Health Podcasts For Parents And Teachers – perfect for parents and teachers who are on the go, you can listen to these podcasts on your mobile phone, tablet, iPad/iPhone, computer or laptop anytime, anywhere. Audio Learning will help you learn more about how to keep your child or your students healthy even as you drive, while you are out exercising, or doing whatever you want to do.
Free Health Videos For Parents And Teachers – free videos for parents, teachers, and children to appeal to the visual and auditory senses of the kids.
