With the ever-increasing polarization of our modern world, it’s important to start teaching traits like empathy and kindness to kids at a young age. These skills lead to a better understanding of the world and the diverse perspectives found throughout it, leading to happier, healthier, more well-adjusted adults. Here at Cardinal Rule Press, we understand that these values are important to a child’s developmental growth, so we’ve laid out some of the most important reasons to create a culture of understanding and encouragement around teaching emotional literacy through children’s reading engagement!

The Power of Realistic Fiction

At CRP we strive to create a community of representation grounded in the real world, where readers can identify themselves in the characters and actions they’re reading about. This commitment to realistic fiction helps to make abstract concepts, like empathy and kindness, more recognizable. As characters take action, the readers can identify whether or not these actions identify with their value system, further engaging them and teaching critical thinking and reading skills, and an increased understanding of other people’s situations. Furthermore, our books are accompanied by comprehension questions that inspire active reading and retention of the concepts, to make sure that social-emotional learning is not only realized but also practiced. 

Diverse Perspectives

Engaging in stories that don’t necessarily represent the lived experience of the reader becomes an important element in teaching empathy and kindness as well. The realization that the world doesn’t look or feel the same to everyone else as it does to you can be an empowering promoter of future social change, so encouraging that realization in young minds holds incredible weight. Take, for example, our book Chocolate Milk, Por Favor. This exploration of language barriers immediately creates a new understanding of the hardships of others in children who aren’t used to seeing that kind of divergence. Through this exploration, they can also learn that just because there’s a barrier (in this case language-based), there doesn’t have to be a lack of friendship, through empathy and kindness. 

Embracing Emotions

Essential in the learning and practicing of emotions like empathy and kindness, is the embrasure and recognition of your own emotions as a reader! Base emotions like joy, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust are usually learned first and without embracing these feelings, it’s impossible to identify them in others and empathize with them through kindness. In children’s picture books, the characters differentiate themselves from the reader’s daily routines, encouraging recognition and validation of the emotions they experience, especially through an understanding of the situation they’ve found themselves in. This promotes empathetic engagement and through a resolution, young readers can understand the role that empathy and kindness play in solving issues in a simple, effective, and understanding way. Check out The Fruit Salad Friend for examples of regulating these emotions. 

Modeling Empathy as a Skill

Further teaching empathy as a skill to be practiced are books that model how it can be used to solve issues between characters brought about by misunderstanding. Not only do readers get to see how empathy is practiced, but seeing how the resolution benefits all the characters in the story inspires them to find ways to perform similar actions in their everyday lives. A great example of this can be found in The Potato Chip Champ, where a lack of understanding leads to a lack of empathy, however a simple act of kindness leads to a solution of inclusion. This representation helps encourage further acts of kindness, especially with an understanding that you don’t always know everyone’s situation. 

Inclusive Worlds

Of course, one of the most important aspects of encouraging and understanding empathy comes from inclusive representations of diversity. Each person finds themselves in different situations and relating to others can be hard if they don’t think, feel, or look like you, however with picture books we can witness conversations and actions related to communities that the reader may not traditionally come into contact with. Additionally, many marginalized and underrepresented groups fail to see themselves represented in the stories they read and interact with, so this comes with an opportunity to see themselves as the hero of the story, validating their status as equal to everyone else. 

We’ve laid out several ways we try to incorporate empathy and kindness work within our picture books, in addition to a wider survey of how these inclusions consistently promote emotionally literate children. From the importance of realistic fiction to the power of diversity and inclusion to the modeling of effective empathy work, engaging in as many perspectives as possible is of the utmost importance to develop intelligent, kind, and comfortable kids.