Thursday 8th June is Empathy Day where authors, illustrators, schools, libraries and families came together to recognise the power of empathy through books. It was organised by EmpathyLab – the first organisation “to build children’s empathy, literacy and social activism through a systematic use of high-quality literature”.
Empathy and Reading
The website has a plethora of interesting information ranging from research studies, activities, corporate training elements and book recommendations. As part of their strategy, EmpathyLab also produces collections of graphic and verse novels, poetry and novels for Primary and Senior School students. There are 40 recommended books for 3 – 11-year-olds and the 25 selected books (below) are for 12-16-year-olds.
2024 Book Collections and Guides (empathylab.uk)
How to put empathy into action…
FINAL SECONDARY EMPATHYLAB GUIDE JAN24.pdf (cdn-website.com)
In the Senior School, we are revamping our well-being corner to include books about mindfulness; fiction/non-fiction books which evoke empathy and we will be acquiring more of the titles from the EmpathyLab recommended list. In the meantime a list of empathy books past and present can also be found on Firefly (Senior Library/Empathy Books).
