Social-Emotional September-Top 10 Books for Teaching About Difficult Emotions

Last updated on July 21st, 2023 at 09:24 pm

Last week I gave an overview of four SEL curriculums, so this week I want to follow up with what I personally think are ten of the best read aloud books for teaching about emotions.

Social-emotional learning is one of those educational buzzwords right now, but with good reason. In order for students to be in a learning state of mind, they need to be able to regulate their emotions and in order for students to regulate their emotions, they need to be able to identify them and have strategies in place for when a strong feeling occurs. I believe one of the best ways to teach about emotions and useful strategies to use during moments of strong feelings is by reading books about them.

Below you will find books to use for teaching about different emotions and books that focus on one emotion. The books about a singular emotion were selected because they are the ones that are more difficult for students to understand. These feelings are anger, embarassment, jealousy, frustration, and worry. I will be using the word feelings and emotions interchangably.

1. The Way I Feel by Janan Cain-This book has a page for each feeling and describes how your body feels when experiencing each feeling. The illustrations contribute to the greatness of this book because you can see what the feeling looks like on each character’s face. Furthermore, the coloring used on each page illicits the feeling being described. Another reason I recommend this book is because it hits on feelings not normally mentioned like disappointed, proud, frustrated, bored, and more. Make sure to get the paperback version rather than the board book because the board book leaves out some of the feelings.

3. When Sophie Gets Angry-Really, Really Angry… by Molly Bang-This book begins with Sophie getting angry because her sister doesn’t want to give her a turn with a toy and then she falls over another toy, which makes her angry. This book describes how the anger makes Sophie feel, what she does, and in the end how she calms down. I like how the book rides through her wave of anger from beginning to end, so students can see how anger builds, but doesn’t last forever. This book can be used to discuss appropriate ways to calm down and that feelings change.

4. Ravi’s Roar by Tom Percival-In this book, Ravi gets mad when it seems nothing is going his way and when he gets mad he turns into a tiger. When Ravi is the tiger he can do everything he wants, but he becomes lonely. Ravi’s anger fades and he apologizes. He becomes a boy once again. I like that this book uses the word furious to describe how Ravi feels. The illustrations in this book are really cool, too, because when Ravi is angry, the only color is him, but when he is not angry, the whole page is full of color. This would be a great book to start a conversation about apologizing, along with what anger looks and feels like.

5. If You’re Angry and You Know It by Cecily Kaiser-This book uses the song “If You’re Happy and You Know It” to teach about anger. It shares real situations that may make students angry and gives real strategies that students can use to calm down. I, also, love that you can sing the book, making it a crowd-pleaser for young learners!

6. Any Froggy Book by Jonathan London-I always use Froggy books to teach about the feeling of embarrassed. In every Froggy book Froggy gets, “more red in the face, than green.” Students usually laugh at Froggy’s situation and it becomes a teachable moment for the class.

7. When I’m Feeling Jealous by Tracy Moroney-This book does a great job of defining the word jealous in child-friendly terms. It describes situations in which one may feel jealous and tells what to do to help get rid of jealous feelings.

9. The Very Frustrated Monster by Andi Green-Twitch, the monster, is having a bad day. Twitch acts out and looks for someone to blame. Then, he sees a squirrel who continues to collect acorns, without getting upset when things get difficult for him. Twitch decides to think more about what he can control than what he can’t. I like how in the book Twitch uses a calm down strategy and it doesn’t work. Furthermore, I like how in the end he has to think about what he can control and not let the other things bother him.

10. Ruby Finds a Worry by Tom Percival– The character in this book, Ruby, is worried. As the story progresses, her worry grows. In the end, she sees another child with a worry and realizes that everyone worries. Ruby, also, finds out that when you talk about your worry, it will disappear. I like how the story gives a good strategy to help with worry and describes how a worry can grow over time. This book would be useful for starting a discussion about what your students worry about because the book never says what Ruby is worried about.

Teaching and talking about emotions in your classroom will help you to build positive relationships with your students creating an atmosphere conducive to learning. See my blog post on the importance of building relationships with your students here.

I hope these book recommendations are useful to you! Please comment below on what books you read to your class or add any other recommendations you have!