Best Chess Books for Kids, Matched to Level

Walk into any scholastic chess tournament and ask the coaches what their students are reading, and you'll hear the same dozen titles again and again. The list barely changes from decade to decade, because the classics work. What changes is the order — the right book at 500 is a waste of money at 1100, and vice versa.

Why coaches still assign books

Apps and puzzle sites are excellent for volume, but a good book does something they don't: it forces a child to sit with one idea until it sticks. A puzzle app serves the next position the instant the last one is solved. A book on a table, next to a real board, slows everything down — and slow is where chess understanding actually forms.

There's a second reason. A book is a syllabus. The author decided what comes first, what comes next, and what can wait. For a parent who doesn't play, that structure is worth more than any single lesson in it.

Just learned the moves: no rating yet

At this stage the job is not improvement — it's making sure chess stays fun while the rules bed in. Two titles come up constantly among coaches of young beginners:

• Chess for Children by Murray Chandler. Cartoon format, big colourful diagrams, gentle pace. The standard first book for roughly ages five to ten.
• The Batsford Book of Chess for Children by Sabrina Chevannes. Written as a conversation between two kids, which younger readers take to more readily than an adult lecturing from the page.

One idea per page and large diagrams matter more than the author's pedigree here. A dense book at this age teaches one lesson only: that chess books are boring.

Roughly 400 to 800: tactics, tactics, tactics

Once a child has a provisional rating and stops leaving pieces where they can simply be taken, almost every coach assigns the same thing: tactics workbooks. Games at this level are decided by forks, pins and hanging pieces, so that's where the study time goes.

• Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. A programmed-learning book — hundreds of small yes-or-no puzzles with the answer overleaf. Kids can work through it alone, which is its whole appeal.
• Chess Tactics for Students by John Bain. A proper workbook covering thirteen basic tactical themes, with hints and worksheets a child fills in using notation. Coaches love it because it's self-correcting.
• Winning Chess Strategy for Kids and Winning Chess Puzzles for Kids by Jeff Coakley. Aimed at roughly ages seven to thirteen, and widely regarded by scholastic coaches as the best-built kids' workbooks in print.

Pick one and finish it. Three half-finished tactics books teach less than one completed twice.

Roughly 800 to 1200: whole games and first strategy

Somewhere past 800, pure puzzle-solving stops being enough. The games last longer, the blunders get rarer, and the child needs to see how moves connect into a plan. This is where two classics earn their reputation:

• Play Winning Chess by Yasser Seirawan — the first of his Winning Chess series. It gives a framework (force, time, space, pawn structure) rather than a bag of tricks, and the follow-up volumes on tactics and strategy slot in naturally afterwards.
• Logical Chess: Move by Move by Irving Chernev. Thirty-three complete master games with every single move explained in plain English. It reads slowly on purpose. Best started once the child has mostly stopped hanging pieces, and it repays being read twice.

Keep a tactics workbook running alongside. Strategy books explain why; tactics books keep the child from throwing the game away anyway.

1200 and beyond: endgames and harder work

Past 1200 the child probably has a coach with opinions, so treat these as defaults rather than orders:

• Silman's Complete Endgame Course by Jeremy Silman. Organised by rating band — the child reads only the chapters for their level and comes back later for the rest. That structure makes it one book that serves from club level to expert.
• Best Lessons of a Chess Coach by Sunil Weeramantry and Ed Eusebi. Real classroom lessons in dialogue form, generally pitched at players around 1000 and up with a solid reading level.
• Learn Chess the Right Way by Susan Polgar — a five-book series that suits older or ambitious students ready for sustained tactical training.

How a child should actually use a chess book

The book is half the method. The other half is how it's used, and this is where most home study quietly fails.

• Real board, real pieces. Have the child set up positions physically rather than solving from the diagram alone. Moving the pieces builds the board vision that reading never will.
• Cover the answer. An index card over the solution, a genuine attempt written down first, then check. Reading solutions is not solving.
• Short and regular beats long and rare. Fifteen to twenty minutes, most days, outlasts a two-hour Sunday session that dies within a month.
• Write in it. Ticks, dates, crosses next to missed puzzles. A marked-up workbook is a record of work; a pristine one usually means it wasn't opened.

Workbooks versus reading books

It helps to know which type you're buying, because they're used differently. A workbook — Bain, Coakley, the Polgar series — is puzzles with space to answer. The child does it largely alone, and progress is visible page by page. A reading book — Chernev, Seirawan — is prose with diagrams, and it wants a board set up next to it and ideally an adult or coach to talk it over with.

Under about 800, buy workbooks almost exclusively. Reading books enter the mix once the child can follow a game in notation without losing the thread.

Signs you've bought the wrong level

Rating bands are rough guides, so watch the child instead of the cover. The book is too hard if they can't attempt most puzzles without peeking, or a page of prose prompts three questions per paragraph. It's too easy if they clear pages at speed with near-perfect scores and visible boredom. The sweet spot is a success rate somewhere around three puzzles in four — enough winning to stay motivated, enough failure to be learning. Shelve a too-hard book rather than forcing it; it'll be exactly right in six months.

Mistakes parents make with chess books

Three come up constantly. First, buying ambition instead of level — an opening encyclopaedia for an 800-rated ten-year-old signals seriousness and delivers nothing. Second, buying five books at once; the child skims all of them and finishes none. Third, turning the book into homework with rows and deadlines, which reliably kills the hobby the book was meant to feed. The book supports the playing, not the other way round — a child who plays four games a week and does one workbook page a day is on a better path than one who reads daily and never plays.

If your child works with a coach, ask which single book they'd assign and in what order — most have a firm answer, and a book the coach checks in on gets finished far more often than one that arrives unannounced. Coaches on Grandmaster Gains pair that kind of assignment with playable lessons, but the principle holds with a paper notebook: someone besides the child should know what page they're on.

Common questions

What is the best first chess book for a young child?

For ages five to ten, Chess for Children by Murray Chandler is the most commonly recommended starting point among coaches — cartoon format, big diagrams, one idea at a time. The Batsford Book of Chess for Children is a strong alternative with a friendlier conversational style. Either one covers everything a new player needs.

Does my child need to know chess notation to use these books?

For the earliest picture books, no. From the tactics-workbook stage onwards, yes — Bain's workbook, for example, has children record answers in algebraic notation. It takes most kids only a session or two to pick up, and it's worth learning early because every book, coach and tournament scoresheet uses it.

Are books still worth it when free puzzle apps exist?

Yes, for different reasons. Apps are unbeatable for puzzle volume and instant feedback. A book provides a structured syllabus, forces slower and deeper thinking, and works with a real board — which builds visualisation in a way screens don't. Most coaches use both: apps for daily reps, a book as the backbone.

How long should a child spend on a chess book each day?

Fifteen to twenty minutes of genuine effort, most days of the week, is plenty at scholastic level. Consistency matters far more than session length, and the book should never crowd out actual games — playing remains the main way children improve. If daily study is causing arguments, cut the time in half rather than abandoning it.

Where to go from here

Everything above is the practical layer — the part that decides whether a club survives, whether a child keeps playing, and whether a coaching business pays. It is also the part almost nobody writes about, because it is less interesting than opening theory and far more useful.

If you are teaching, the two things that move the needle fastest are structure and measurement: a session that has the same shape every week, and a number each student can watch go up. Neither requires you to be a strong player. Both require you to be organised, and organisation is the thing you can actually control.

The rest of this Library covers the chess itself — twenty-one openings written from both sides, seven complete guides to tactics, endgames, checkmate patterns and strategy, and twenty variants with a guide each. All of it is free, and all of it is playable on a live board, which matters more than reading it.

More on coaching and scholastic chess

• How Chess Clocks and Time Controls Work
• How Much Do Chess Coaches Charge?
• Chess Homework Students Actually Do