Picture Books for Eliciting Emotional Expressions

[Lynne Hewitt]

The works of Kevin Henkes all tend to deal with issues that resonate with
young children through early elementary school, perfect for the ages you
describe (though 3 year olds will obviously be on the edge of understanding
some of this stuff).  Characters behave in realistic ways depicting a wide
range of emotions....Examples:

Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse; Owen; Chrysanthemum; Chester's Way; Julius
the Baby of the World.

Characters are depicted as humanoid mice, so ethnicity issues are
downplayed, though a middle class suburban environment is assumed.  Lilly's
Purple Plastic Purse has many of the emotions you describe: pride, joy,
anger, shame, relief.

The Berenstain bears series of books deals with a wide array of problems
typical of young children's experiences--getting along with friends and
siblings, new baby issues, fears, greed, bad habits.  (I refer to the
picture books--there are novels for older children as well.)

Also, I like the frog stories for eliciting emotional terms--Mercer Mayer's
frogs and dogs are as expressive as his boys!

Lynne Hewitt





At 12:14 PM 7/20/2001 +0100, you wrote:
>A very reliable source of this kind of talk is 'Where the Wild Things Are'
>by Maurice Sendak. Other promising titles are:
>
>The Tunnel by Anthony Brown
>
>Badger's Parting Gifts by Susan Varley
>
>My Brother Sean by Errol Lloyd
>
>The Great Green Mouse Disaster by Martin Waddell and Phillipe Dupasquier
>
>Dogger by Shirley Hughes
>
>The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg (top end of your age
>range)
>
>I'm sorry I don't have publishing details to hand, but all of these books
>are classics and should be widely available.
>
>Best wishes
>
>George Hunt
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Jiansheng Guo" <jshguo at csuhayward.edu>
>To: <info-childes at mail.talkbank.org>
>Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 2:34 AM
>Subject: Picture Books for Eliciting Emotional Expressions
>
>
> > Dear Colleagues,
> >
> > I'm planning to collect some narratives that contain emotional
> > expressions, and am wondering if there is a good picture story book for
> > this purpose.
> >
> > I would like to see how children (from 3 to 9 years) label emotions and
> > describe the cause and consequence of the characters' emotional
> > reactions to emotional arousing events.  Ideally, the story should
> > contain events that might arouse happiness, sadness, anger, fear,
> > surprise, shame and pride.
> >
> > If you have used any books good for this purpose, or if you have any
> > references to previous studies using such books, I would be most
> > appreciative to know.  Thanks for your kind help in advance.
> >
> > All my best wishes,
> > Guo
> >
> > Jiansheng Guo
> > Dept. of Human Development
> > California State University, Hayward
> >
> >