Self-Awareness and Personal Discovery Book Selections for Kids

[ChristinaShort]

SEL or Social Emotional Learning strategies are an essential part to teaching in our society today. One of the best ways we can go about this is through literature. Here are a list of three multicultural children's books that support SEL through self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. 

The Day You Begin by Jaqueline Woodson,  Ideal for grades K-3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rLlyFs8eIM

The Day You Begin is a story about many different children's experiences through life. The story covers different cultural backgrounds, travels, language, physical appearances and even food that may be different from other children. The story gives a message about how unique each one of us is and how important it is to embrace our differences. 

This book enhances children SEL skills by giving them the opportunity to look into the window of other children's experiences and cultures, as well as possibly their own. It's important to see how certain words may affect others when we don't understand it. This book allows children to appreciate their own differences, others, and to treat everyone a little kinder. With illustrations by Rafael Lopez, the reader is given a beautiful support to reference as they read the book for better comprehension.

I Am Okay To Feel by Karamo Brown and Jason “Rachel” Brown, Ideal for grades 1-2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRK291cy96k

I Am Okay To Feel describes the many different feelings a little boy goes through as he goes on a walk with his dad. He describes all the emotions he goes through and why he's thinking that way. With support from his dad, he's able to talk through what he's feeling and get to the root of the harder feelings. When he begins to feel scared, his father offers tools to help ease his scary feelings.

This book does an excellent job at supporting SEL and personal growth for children by giving them words for their feelings. To understand and designate our feelings is not innate and must be taught. This book gives children experiences they can relate to with the names for the feelings and tools for reassurance. This is a multicultural book about a African American son and his father. This would give children who may resonate with their appearance and those who don't, a chance to realize no matter what color of skin we have, we all share the seem feelings.

This book also offers excellent supportive illustrations by Diobelle Cerna to help to visually map out what the reader is reading and give the opportunity to offer support for comprehension. The authors also do a great job at chunking the words all over the pages so that it's more readable for children.

The Rainbow Parade by Emily Neilson, Ideal for grades Preschool- 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIuX5vOAOnY

This is a story about a little girl who is going on an adventure with her two moms to experience her first LGBTQ+ Pride festival. She experiences the noise, bright colors, smiles, and flamboyance of a pride parade. When her moms invite her to join in the parade, she doesn't quite feel like she belongs until she's reassured everyone is welcome for who they are. As the little girl walks through the parade she sees lots of happy families just like hers along the sidewalks, as well as, the colorful people in the parade. She is reminded that pride means to be true to yourself and decides she will continue to practice it.

The Rainbow Parade shows us a story of a child going into a completely new experience and the growth that happens throughout. She is supported by her parents and reminded that even though new experiences may seem scary at first, you can do anything with love and support of family. This is a great message other children can think of when they're faced with a new situation. This story also supports a family who may seem a little different than what a traditional one may appear to be but overall, is just like any other family. This will teach children about the idea of LGBTQ+ families and remind them they're just like everyone else. This book also supports readers by placement of text throughout the book. There aren't large paragraphs in any of the pages and the book focuses more on illustration support.

With the support of multicultural books and SEL literature, children will have a much better chance at developing the must needed social emotional skills to better develop their whole self. With social emotional skills built, the better the child will progress with other academic skills and development.

References

Osorio, S. L. (2018). Multicultural Literature as a Classroom Tool. Multicultural Perspectives, 20(1), 47–52. https://doi-org.links.franklin.edu/10.1080/15210960.2018.1408348