Incorporating Children's Picturebooks on Mindfulness in Bibliotherapy

Abstract Picturebooks are powerful forms of stories because the illustrations work in concert with text. In this dissertation, I explore how picturebooks are used in bibliotherapy to enhance and teach the concepts of mindfulness. I discuss bibliotherapy from a developmental and clinical perspective. Bibliotherapy is a medium that encourages school-aged children to express emotions to develop empathy and coping strategies for emotional wellness. This dissertation aims to examine the picturebooks used in bibliotherapy in educational and therapeutic contexts. Picturebooks, can often facilitate children's ability to deal with their emotional concerns and prepare children for life events. Incorporating children's picturebooks, teaching mindfulness, and promoting empathy development in children is crucial for emotional well-being and needs to be situated in the literature circle. In this dissertation, I explore how picturebooks can be used for therapeutic purposes and incorporated into educational and therapeutic contexts. The main objectives of bibliotherapy are to promote empathy development and emotional wellness in children. Through stories, children can learn about empathic responses to situations and, over time, grow in their empathy. Adults need to listen to childrens voices. Once adults have created a space to listen to children, they can use various picturebooks to access childrens emotional realm. Scholarly research has just begun to examine the literature on mindfulness as a window into childrens educational and therapeutic worlds. There is a growing body of literature on the effectiveness of mindfulness for children. My research will illuminate ways regarding teaching mindfulness to children. Picturebooks can help children develop the capacity to learn mindfulness strategies. It is widely acknowledged that children cannot practice mindfulness in the same way that adults do because their executive functioning is not fully developed. The Present, an interactive colouring book on mindfulness that I have written, focuses on allowing children to participate mindfully within a contemplative and performative capacity and will be discussed in this dissertation. Academic writing must tell a story. Even the most specialized academic writing, such as research reports, must tell a story. This dissertation tells a story of the therapeutic benefits of picture-books for children and childrens responses to these stories.