The last year has triggered an avalanche of 9/11-themed books. Many mean well, but some are either painfully didatic or just plain painful to read.

Happily, there are exceptions. Here are a few books that speak eloquently to kids and parents alike.

“on that day,” by Andrea Patel. Ages 3-7. Tricycle Press, $12.95.

With the simplest language – and simple but vivid tissue-paper collages – Andrea Patel has fashioned a reassuring book that even the youngest child can understand. After showing the world in all its round, blue and green glory, she describes a day “when it felt like the world broke.”

The book explains that while sometimes people hurt each other, there are ways all of us can make things right again – by sharing, by being kind, by laughing.

“Goodness is in the world,” concludes Patel, a pre-school teacher who wrote the book as a way to comfort her children, her pupils and herself.

“There will always be good things in the world. You are one of those good things.”

“BRAVEMOLE,” by Lynne Jonell. Ages 4-8. G.F. Putnam’s Sons, $15.99.

When fire-breathing dragons attack, it’s an ordinary Mole – “not a Smartmole or Bigmole or Starmole” – who digs in his claws and saves the day.

Lynne Jonell’s modern-day fable is a thinly veiled salute to firefighters, police and everyone else who acted with grace under pressure on the day tragedy struck.

Couched in clear, colorful language – and accompanied by brightly crayoned illustrations – it’s a pleasure to read aloud.

Some of it gets a little sticky, but it’s hard not to choke up at the account of Mole’s long day and night, when all around were other moles, “moles who bandaged and moles who carried … moles who were nobody special, and they kept on working and they did not stop.”

Kids will no love the dragon drawings, while parents will be drawn to the cozy tableau of Mole and child, reading together.

“NEW YORK’S BRAVEST” by Mary Pope Osborne, paintings by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher. Ages 5-8. Alfred A. Knopf, $15.95.

The story of Mose Humphreys, a legendary New York City firefighter from the 1940s, didn’t start out as a Sept. 11 book, says Mary Pope Osborne, author of “New York’s Bravest.”

In fact, she’d written about Mose – a rowdy, larger-than-life guy – 10 years ago in a children’s book about American folk heroes.

“But after Sept. 11, I couldn’t write,” Osborne told The Post. “No writers I knew could. We were all paralyzed … then out of the blue, an editor called and said, “Remember Mose? Can you retell his story in a picture book?'”

She could. This lavishly illustrated book – about the man with hands the size of Virginia hams and arms that could cross the Hudson in two strokes – is a fun and poignant read. For Mose, legend has it, never turned up one morning after battling a blaze. Rumors abound, until an old-time firefighter puts the company at ease:

“Mose is right here,” he says. “He’s marchin’ with us in our parades. He’s kickin’ up his heels at our fancy dances … that firefighter will never leave us. He’s the very spirit of New York City.”

“LET THERE BE LIGHT: POEMS AND PRAYERS FOR REPAIRING THE WORLD,” compiled and illustrated by Jane Breskin Zalben. Ages 5 and up. Dutton Children’s Books, $16.99.

The author of “Pearl’s Passover” draws on poems and prayers from faiths around the world – Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Native American among them.

Each one, from Ecclesiastes (“To every thing there is a season”) to the “Desiderata” (“Go placidly amid the noise and the haste”) is beautifully illustrated by a variety of styles and media, including cut paper and paper.

Again, simplicity rules the day. One of the loveliest prayers, that of a Breton fisherman, speaks volumes: “Dear God, be good to me. The sea is so wide, and my boat is so small.”

This is a book to treasure.