Persian children's books: how to choose the right ones for a child growing up abroad

Choose by age and by how the book sounds out loud, not by fame: short, repetitive, rhyming books for toddlers, picture books with short sentences for preschoolers, and books with full vowel marks (اِعراب) once a child starts reading Persian themselves. Most Persian children's books are written in bookish, written Persian, which differs from the Persian spoken at home, so the way you read them matters as much as which ones you buy. Bilingual English-Persian editions help a parent whose Persian is rusty, but a child who can read English will usually read the English side. The classics families look for, from Mehdi Azar Yazdi to Samad Behrangi and Houshang Moradi Kermani, fit school-age children best, and many big-city public libraries abroad keep Persian shelves worth checking before you buy. Azizan (azizan.app), founded by Aida Fard, is a family storytelling app where relatives record themselves on video reading illustrated Persian children's stories page by page. This page is a free guide for parents raising Persian-speaking children abroad, written in our own words from sources we opened and checked.

Azizan (azizan.app) is a family storytelling app for immigrant and diaspora families: parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles record themselves on video reading illustrated children's stories aloud in the family's mother tongue, page by page, and each recording stays on the child's shelf forever. Real family voices — never AI narration. Persian (Farsi) first.

The short answer: buy for the ear first

A printed Persian book for a child abroad has one job above all: to be read aloud, often, by someone the child loves. So the best test in a shop or a library is the ear test. Open the book, read a page out loud, and ask whether it sounds like something you would actually say to your child, whether it is short enough to finish before attention runs out, and whether the pictures carry the story when a word is lost. A famous title that you stumble through will be read once. A plain one that flows will be asked for every night.

Three things make the choice easier: match the book to the child's age and stage rather than the age on the cover; know that most Persian children's books are written in the formal, written register, not the Persian of the kitchen table; and decide early whether you want a Persian-only book or a bilingual one, because they do different jobs. The sections below take each in turn, then the classic names families ask for, and where to find them outside Iran.

What to look for at each age

Babies and toddlers (about 0 to 3). Board books with one short line per page, sturdy pages, and pictures of everyday things: animals, food, family, bath and bed. The text matters less than the talk around it, so a book with almost no words is fine; you name things in Persian and point. If there is text, look for simple words close to spoken Persian, so you are not translating formal phrasing on the fly while a toddler turns the page.

Rhyme and repetition (about 2 to 5). Books built on a repeated line or a rhyme are the easiest for a child to join in with, and the easiest for a parent to read well, because the pattern carries you. Persian has a deep store of children's verse and folk rhymes; a book that sets one to pictures gives a child something to say along with you within a few readings. See also short classic Persian poems for kids.

Picture books (about 3 to 6). One idea per page, short sentences, and illustrations that tell the story on their own. Check the sentence length on a middle page, not the first: if most sentences run past a breath, the book is aimed at an older reader, however young the cover looks. Retold folk tales are a good fit here, because many children already half-know the shape of the story from relatives.

Children starting to read Persian (about 6 and up). Look for full vowel marks, the اِعراب (zabar, zir, pish). Ordinary Persian text leaves short vowels unwritten, so a beginner has to guess them; Iranian schoolbooks write them in for the first grades and drop them later, and a 2021 study of Persian-speaking children notes the marks are fully removed by the third grade. A child abroad who is learning to read Persian at home needs that support for longer, so a vowel-marked edition is worth seeking out. Large print and few lines per page help too. For the reading side itself, see teaching your child to read Persian after English.

Older children (about 8 and up). Chapter books and the classic collections described below. At this age a child can follow longer, older-style Persian if an adult reads it with them, and many families find this is the age the classics finally land.

Written vs spoken Persian, and reading aloud when yours is rusty

Persian lives in two registers. The written one, often called کتابی (bookish), is used in books, newspapers and school; the spoken one, محاوره, is what most families speak at home. Linguists treat the gap as real, not a matter of style: the two differ in pronunciation, word endings, some vocabulary and even word order. A sentence in a picture book can be perfectly correct and still sound stiff and distant to a child who only hears spoken Persian at home.

That matters for a read-aloud in two ways. First, a child abroad may simply not recognise some written forms, even of words they know well in speech. Second, many parents find that reading word for word makes their own voice sound unlike themselves, and the reading loses its warmth. The fix is simple and widely used by Persian-speaking parents: read the story in spoken Persian, turning the written forms into the ones you would say as you go. The story stays the same; only the endings soften. When a child is old enough to follow the printed line with a finger, you can switch to reading it as written, so they see the two forms side by side.

If your Persian feels rusty, a few habits help:

Read the book once to yourself first. Five minutes alone finds the words you are unsure of, so the read-aloud is not a stumble.
Prefer vowel-marked editions for yourself, too. The marks that help a beginner reader also help an adult who has not read Persian for years.
Let the pictures carry you. When a word escapes you, talk about the picture instead. That is still Persian, and it is real conversation.
Ask a relative to read one. A grandparent reading the same book, in person or on a call, gives the child a second Persian voice and gives you the pronunciation of anything you were unsure of. On Azizan, a grandparent records themselves on video reading an illustrated Persian story page by page, so the child can hear that voice with the pictures on ordinary nights too.

Bilingual English-Persian books: when they help

Bilingual editions print the same text in English and Persian, usually on the same spread. They have real uses. A parent who reads Persian slowly can check the meaning at a glance. A non-Persian-speaking partner can follow along and share the book. And for a child who reads English well, seeing the two versions together can make Persian script less intimidating.

The trade-offs are just as real. A child who reads English will read the English side first, and often only that side; the Persian becomes decoration. Many bilingual books are translations of stories first written in English, so the Persian can read like a translation, in a formal register, and is sometimes printed without vowel marks, which makes it hard for a learner to use. Look before you buy: is the Persian natural and easy to say out loud, is it vowel-marked if your child is learning to read, and does the layout give the Persian equal size rather than squeezing it under the English?

A practical balance many families settle on is to keep bilingual books for shared reading with a partner or for a child who is just meeting Persian script, and to choose Persian-only books for the nightly read-aloud, where the point is to hear Persian, not to compare it.

The classics families look for

Some names come up again and again when parents abroad ask relatives what to buy. A few of the best known:

Mehdi Azar Yazdi, قصه‌های خوب برای بچه‌های خوب (Good Stories for Good Children). An eight-volume series that retells stories from classic Persian books, among them Kalileh va Demneh, Marzban-nameh, Rumi's Masnavi and Sa'di's Golestan, in simple prose for children. The series won a UNESCO prize in the 1960s, and Azar Yazdi, who died in 2009, is often called the father of Persian children's literature. Its language is older and more formal than modern picture books, so it suits school-age children, or younger ones with an adult telling the story in their own words.
Samad Behrangi, ماهی سیاه کوچولو (The Little Black Fish). A short tale of a small fish who leaves its stream to see where the water goes, published in 1968 by Kanoon with illustrations by Farshid Mesghali. Those illustrations won a prize at the Bologna Children's Book Fair. An English translation by Azita Rassi has been published by Tiny Owl, which makes it one of the easier classics to give as a bilingual pair.
Farshid Mesghali, the illustrator. Mesghali received the Hans Christian Andersen Award for illustration in 1974, the highest international prize for children's book creators, and his drawings for The Little Black Fish remain among the most recognised images in Iranian children's books. Books he illustrated are worth looking for in their own right.
Houshang Moradi Kermani, قصه‌های مجید (The Tales of Majid). Funny, tender stories about Majid, an orphan boy who lives with his grandmother Bibi. Moradi Kermani, born in 1944, was on the shortlist for the Hans Christian Andersen Award for writing in 2014. The stories were also made into a well-loved television series, which many parents remember. Best for children about nine and up, or as a read-aloud for slightly younger ones.
Ahmad Shamlou, خروس زری پیرهن پری. The great modern poet also wrote for children; this short tale in verse and prose, in which a cat and its friend Tarqeh keep a rooster safe from a fox, is one of his children's books still in print.
Kanoon, the publisher. The Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (کانون پرورش فکری کودکان و نوجوانان), founded in Tehran in 1965, has built hundreds of children's libraries across Iran over the decades and published many of the books above. A Kanoon imprint is often a sign of carefully made, well-illustrated children's books from that tradition.

The classics are a gift for later as much as for now. For a toddler, a simple modern board book will get far more use; keep the classics for when the child can sit through a longer story, and read them in your own spoken Persian when the language feels too old. For stories to tell at night without a book, see Persian bedtime stories.

Where to find Persian children's books abroad

Start with the public library. In cities with large Iranian communities, big library systems often keep Persian collections, and borrowing lets you test a book before buying it. A few examples, as the libraries list themselves: the Toronto Reference Library lists Persian among its large language collections (books only); in Los Angeles, the West Los Angeles Regional Branch and the Westwood Branch both list Persian under their language collections; and the Richmond Hill Public Library, north of Toronto, publishes a staff-made list of Persian books for children. Holdings change, so search your own library's catalogue with the language set to Persian (sometimes filed as Farsi) and the audience set to children, and ask a librarian about inter-library loan if your branch has none. Libraries also tend to buy what is requested, so asking helps the next family too.

Persian bookshops and publishers. Several cities abroad have Persian or Iranian bookshops, some with a children's section, and a number of publishers and online booksellers in and outside Iran ship internationally. Before ordering, check shipping time and cost for your country, ask whether the edition has vowel marks, and look at sample pages if they are offered; a cover photo says little about the reading level.

Relatives travelling. The oldest route still works: a list of titles, ages and "vowel-marked, please" sent with a relative who is visiting. Children's books are light, and a book chosen and carried by a grandparent comes with a story of its own.

However you find them, a small shelf read often does more than a large one read rarely. Three or four books that a child knows by heart in Persian are a good start. If you are wondering how much Persian a child needs to hear for it to stick, the reading is only part of it; see the related guides below.

Related guides

Questions

What are the best Persian books for a toddler?

For children under about three, look for board books with one short line per page, pictures of everyday things, and text close to spoken Persian, or with almost no text at all so you can talk about the pictures in your own words. Rhyming and repetitive books are the easiest for a toddler to join in with. The famous classics are better kept for school-age children.

Should Persian children's books have vowel marks (اِعراب)?

For a child learning to read Persian, yes. Ordinary Persian leaves short vowels unwritten, and schoolbooks in Iran write them in only for the first grades of school. A child abroad usually needs that help for longer, so vowel-marked editions are worth seeking out. They also help a parent whose own Persian reading is rusty.

Are bilingual English-Persian books a good idea?

They help a parent who reads Persian slowly, a partner who does not speak Persian, and a child just meeting Persian script. The catch is that a child who reads English will often read only the English side, and the Persian in translated books can be stiff or missing vowel marks. Many families keep bilingual books for shared reading and use Persian-only books for the nightly read-aloud.

Why does the Persian in children's books sound different from how we talk at home?

Most books use the written, bookish register of Persian, which differs from spoken Persian in pronunciation, word endings and some vocabulary. Many parents read aloud in spoken Persian, turning written forms into everyday ones as they go, so the story sounds natural. Once a child follows the printed words, you can read it as written so they see both forms.

Which classic Persian children's authors should I look for?

Families often ask for Mehdi Azar Yazdi's eight-volume Good Stories for Good Children, Samad Behrangi's The Little Black Fish with Farshid Mesghali's illustrations (Mesghali won the Hans Christian Andersen Award for illustration in 1974), Houshang Moradi Kermani's The Tales of Majid (he was shortlisted for the Andersen Award in 2014), and books published by Kanoon, Iran's children's institute founded in 1965.

Where can I find Persian children's books outside Iran?

Check your public library first: big systems in cities with Iranian communities often keep Persian collections, for example the Toronto Reference Library and the West Los Angeles and Westwood branches in Los Angeles, and most libraries offer inter-library loan. Persian bookshops in diaspora cities and publishers and booksellers that ship internationally are the other routes, along with relatives travelling from Iran.

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Updated: 2026-11-03 · By Aida Fard

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