Exploring Multicultural Picturebooks With Social-Emotional Themes

Integration of social-emotional learning (SEL) content and vocabulary within read-alouds of multicultural literature provides powerful learning contexts for enhancing young children's social problem-solving, language development, and comprehension. Multicultural literature allows children to gain greater understanding of themselves and others through exploration of lives, realities and experiences of characters within texts. In this article, we offer a culturally sustaining pedagogical and social-emotional learning framework, and criteria to guide educators' selection of multicultural picturebooks with social-emotional learning themes for read-alouds. We describe key features of recommended picturebooks and teaching suggestions for promoting vocabulary and social-emotional learning through read-alouds with young children.