Young children’s picture-books as a forum for the socialization of emotion

Abstract

Guided by Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, this article examined whether characters in emotion picture-books express and talk about emotions in ways that are consistent with theory and research on children's emotions. In general, we found that picture-books recommended by experts in social-emotional development contain content that is fairly consistent with published research in early childhood. We also found parents' reading of the picture-books was consistent with the content analysis, even though we recorded their spontaneous emotion-based language in addition to the text presented in the picturebooks. The findings also suggested that reading of emotion picture-books may increase preservice teachers' references to emotions, which could translate into greater use of emotion language in the early childhood classroom. Results are discussed with regard to the role of picture-books as an important source of emotionrelated information for children, parents, and teachers.

A Comparative Analysis of Emotion-Related Cultural Norms in Popular American and Chinese Storybooks

“…Regarding children’s development, there has been a growing interest in their emotion socialization, which essentially means that children develop their emotional competence through interactions with agents of socialization, such as parents, teachers, peers, and media (Eisenberg et al, 1998). As storybook reading allows children to learn emotion-related vocabulary and relate to the emotional experiences of the characters in the books, there has been an ongoing debate about the role storybooks play in children’s emotion socialization (Garner & Parker, 2018). For instance, previous studies have investigated the potential of storybooks in fostering children’s socioemotional development from diverse perspectives, such as the content presented in storybooks, conversations between caregivers and children on the books’ content, and children’s exposure to different storybooks (Bailey et al, 2013; Farkas et al, 2020; Ziv et al, 2013).…”

The effects of teacher–child racial congruence, child race, and emotion situation knowledge on teacher–child relationships and school readiness

“…Emotion situation knowledge predicts preliteracy performance, preschool adjustment, and other preacademic abilities and other indicators of school readiness (Curby et al, 2015; Garner & Waajid, 2008; Ursache et al, 2019). Young children's preliteracy skills, an important aspect of school readiness, may be enhanced when children attend to fictional characters' emotional states in situational contexts (Garner & Parker, 2018; Gernsbacher et al, 1992). Emotion situation knowledge also can help children to regulate their own classroom attention and behavior (S. Denham et al, 2012; von Salisch et al, 2013).…”

Where the Wild Things Are: understanding of emotions in a picture book

“…Anger may be more difficult to identify compared to sadness because of societal norms which dictate the suppressed expression of intense emotions (Izard 1994). Nonetheless, demonstrations of anger are common and normal in younger children (Potegal, Kosorok, and Davidson 1996), therefore a carefully chosen book could potentially help them understand anger better (Garner and Parker 2018). Future studies could investigate this further.…”