The invention discloses a preparation method of an anode material of a lithium ion battery, wherein the anode material is cerium vanadate synthesized by a conventional hydrothermal method. The method disclosed by the invention is carried out under mild synthesis condition and with low device requirement. In addition, the variety of reactants needed by the preparation is few, and raw materials are cheap and available; the synthesized cerium vanadate material is high in purity without impurities; and granules are uniform, which are particles of about 100nm. The cerium vanadate prepared by the method disclosed by the invention can be directly used as the anode material of the lithium ion battery without any carbon coating treatment. The obtained cerium vanadate material is provided with rather high charge-discharge platform voltage, appropriate specific capacity and rather good recycling performance. Thus, the cerium vanadate prepared by the method disclosed by the invention has a good application prospect in the anode material field of the lithium ion battery.