Happy EASTER, friends! This is one of my favorite holidays for SO many reasons and I’m so excited to learn and play with my little guy this Easter. Springtime, bunnies, and baby chicks make for a BUNCH of really cute stories and books!.

So, I pulled together my current favorite Easter books for toddlers and preschoolers, along with a few ideas for how to use each book to teach simple skills at home. Scroll to see which ones your little ones are going to LOVE.

Also…SPOILER ALERT: I’ll give a quick synopsis of what each book is about. Just so I don’t spoil any part of the stories for you, you’ve been fairly warned. Haha! :)

Easter Books for Toddlers & Preschoolers

1. My First Easter

This book by Tomie dePaola is a super simple one for little ones to understand! It goes through and identifies things about Easter that they might see in their own lives, like coloring eggs, new East Sunday clothes, and the Easter bunny.

I love this book for it’s simple pictures and words. There are only 1-2 sentences on each page, making it a great book to talk about and elaborate on. Little ones can make connections to it by connecting it to other books they’ve read as well as things they do with you for Easter time.

2. Good News! It’s Easter!

Oh goodness, this one might be my FAVORITE of ALL! Each page of this book starts with “Good news!” being shouted from a different spring thing, like tulips, bunnies, and butterflies. Each thing says what great thing they’re able to do because of the Good News. On the last page, Jesus comes out of the tomb shouting “Good News!” and that he’s back from the dead to love and save people. The last page quotes Isaiah 43:19, showing Jesus with the tomb in the background.

I obviously LOVE the message of this book, with all of nature shouting the Good News, but the pictures are also super colorful and sweet. I think it’d make a great book to use to encourage little ones to tell what they can do in their lives because of the Good News! This book is such a simple way to bring the true meaning of Easter into your kids’ lives at an early age.

3. Llama Llama Easter Egg

Oh, Llama Llama! One of our forever favorite characters. Haha! 🙂 Llama Llama Easter Egg is written in the normal rhyming pattern of all the Llama Llama books and discovers all the happy things Llama sees at Easter time. From jellybeans to egg hunts, this book follows Llama finding all kinds of Easter fun until he sees a tiny egg hatch open as a baby bird is born!

This book would be a really good one to practice comprehension by having kids act out what’s happening or draw pictures. They can act out an egg hunt, finding an egg with a baby bird inside, or the emotions they might feel during each part of the story.

4. The Night Before Easter
This book tells the story of two little kids who are in bed on the night before Easter! It follows a similar pattern to “The Night Before Christmas”, but tells about how the Easter Bunny came on Easter night to fill up the Easter baskets with lots of yummy treats and hides a bunch of eggs around the house before sneaking away into the night!

I love this book’s colorful illustrations and little bits of surprise! It would be a great book to start noticing words that rhyme and trying out some predictions…what do your little ones think might happen on the next page?! Super fun little game to play while you practice an essential literacy skill!

5. It’s Not Easy Being a Bunny
This was the first Easter book Ethan pulled out today and he LOVED it! It’s about a bunny named PJ Funnybunny who does NOT want to be a bunny anymore because he doesn’t like all the things about his bunny life. So, he runs away to try being different animals, like a bear, beaver, and even a skunk! He soon finds something about each of these animal families that he doesn’t like at all, so he goes home and realizes that he loves being a bunny.

I love the opportunities this book offers to teach kiddos to find things about their lives and families that they love and are thankful for. The way the text is written also follows a predictable pattern that Ethan picked up on and could “help me read” only the second time we read it! These kinds of books with some predictable patterns are GREAT for littles to try “reading” on their own for quiet time.

6. First Bible Words
New words are GREAT, and new BIBLE words are even more amazing in my opinion! :) This book covers a BUNCH of unique vocabulary words that little ones will hear in the most common Bible stories. It’s a great resource to use before reading new Bible stories or to connect the stories they hear in books or videos like Veggie Tales to pictures and words! I gave this to Ethan on his second Easter and he loves looking through and naming all the pictures even a year later.

7. The Story of the Easter Bunny

“The Story of the Easter Bunny” is a sweet story about an older couple who made tasty treats and straw baskets for all the children in their village each Easter, while their little pet rabbit watched them. One year, Easter is the next morning and there is still so much work to finish, so the rabbit helps the old couple by packing and delivering the baskets. The next year, he does a bit more, like coloring eggs and making the candy before delivering the baskets at night when no one could see him. The years go on and the couple gets too old to do the work anymore, so the rabbit takes over all the jobs they used to do and makes sure all the children still get a special Easter basket each year and THAT is the story of the Easter bunny!