A Diverse Social and Emotional Learning Booklist for Gifted Learners and Advanced Readers

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A Diverse Social and Emotional Learning Booklist

for Gifted Learners and Advanced Readers

Rhoda Myra Garces-Bacsal, Najwa Mohammed Alhosani, Hala Elhoweris &

Ruanni Tupas

To cite this article: Rhoda Myra Garces-Bacsal, Najwa Mohammed Alhosani, Hala Elhoweris &

Ruanni Tupas (2023) A Diverse Social and Emotional Learning Booklist for Gifted Learners and

Advanced Readers, Roeper Review, 45:1, 21-36, DOI: 10.1080/02783193.2022.2145397

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02783193.2022.2145397

Published online: 09 Jan 2023.

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SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL DYNAMICS

A Diverse Social and Emotional Learning Booklist for Gifted Learners and

Advanced Readers

Rhoda Myra Garces-Bacsal , Najwa Mohammed Alhosani, Hala Elhoweris, and Ruanni Tupas

ABSTRACT

Despite the changing school demographics indicating an increasingly greater diversity in today’s

classrooms, research indicates how teachers have little cognizance of the cultural backgrounds of

their students. This becomes an issue among gifted students who are double minorities: those who

are gifted and of a dierent cultural background, or of low-income status, rendering them doubly

vulnerable. One of the ways this can be addressed is by introducing diverse books with an

international focus to 9- to 12-year-old gifted students allowing them to see themselves reected

in what they read and to facilitate the learning of social and emotional learning competencies.

Using the critical multicultural analysis framework and strategies on promoting multicultural

awareness, recommended activities and discussion questions are provided to educators.

KEYWORDS

booklist for gifted; culturally

responsive teaching; gifted

readers; multiculturalism;

social-emotional

The impact of globalization has permeated today’s class-

rooms which are described to “have become more het-

erogenous, diverse, and multicultural due to the rise of

migration, immigration and remigration” (Auzina,

2018, p. 25). This impact is evidenced in a greater

emphasis on communication and collaboration skills,

and learning themes of identity, human rights, cultural

and intercultural awareness (Auzina, 2013), themes that

are also subsumed under social and emotional learning

(SEL) competencies (Collaborative for Academic, Social

and Emotional Learning, 2013).

The latest immigration wave is said to be very diverse

with most immigrants coming from Asian (Budiman &

Ruiz, 2021) and Latin American countries (Pew Research

Center, 2012, 2015). In fact, the projections indicate that

“by 2050, Whites in the U.S. will be the minority popula-

tion” (Eng, 2013, p. 275), and that Asian Americans will

be the nation’s largest immigrant group by the middle of

the century, surpassing Hispanics in 2055 (Budiman &

Ruiz, 2021). Demographic shifts may likewise be attrib-

uted to multiracial youth, with about one in 10 children

born to parents of diﬀerent racial groups, with the per-

centages expected to triple by 2060 (Pew Research Center,

2015).

In addition to the growing ethnic diversity in schools,

the impact of gentriﬁcation, resulting in the displace-

ment of low-income residents of color, is also said to

have potential implications for changes to school district

populations (Diem et al., 2019). Preliminary research

ﬁndings indicate beneﬁts for middle-class gentrifying

families and negative impacts for low-income families

of color who may be existing residents (Tang & Falola,

2018). This can strongly inﬂuence everyone’s social

world, contributing to racial illiteracy (DiAngelo, 2012)

that can subsequently lead to an epistemological divide

that may lead to a resistance of and “delegitimizing all

Other epistemologies” (Han, 2018, p. 599).

Despite the increasing diversity in schools, recent

reports indicate how “students who are Black, Latinx,

and Native American are disproportionally underrepre-

sented” in K-12 gifted and talented programs (Peters,

2021, p. 1). Given the changing demographics in the

student population around the world, the classroom is

now perceived as the primary arena for interethnic con-

tact and relationship formation (Schwarzenthal et al.,

2018). Hence, teachers are expected to serve as globally

competent professionals who are able to “examine local,

global and intercultural issues, understand and appreci-

ate diﬀerent perspectives and world view, interact suc-

cessfully and respectfully with others, and take

responsible actions towards sustainable and collective

well-being” (Organization for Economic Co-operation

and Development, 2018, p. 4).

In fact, Haddix and Price-Dennis (2013) claimed that

the goal of teacher education programs in a globalized

age should work toward “sustained commitment of

working against oppressive structures that impede the

academic success of students from diverse backgrounds”

(p. 248). This is especially relevant to gifted students

who are considered double minorities (i.e. being gifted

CONTACT Rhoda Myra Garces-Bacsal [email protected] United Arab Emirates University, College of Education, Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Street,

Asharej, Al Ain Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

ROEPER REVIEW

2023, VOL. 45, NO. 1, 21–36

https://doi.org/10.1080/02783193.2022.2145397

and of a diﬀerent race or ethnicity or of low-income

status; Stambaugh & Ford, 2015). Hence, information

concerning gifted students’ familial and community

socialization processes and their unique cultural concep-

tions of intelligence are deemed as integral in program-

ming and curriculum planning (Nguyen, 2012).

Despite the call for a greater infusion of multicultur-

alism throughout the gifted curricula, gifted education

programs have still been found to be particularly want-

ing in this regard (Ecker-Lyster & Niileksela, 2017; Ford

et al., 2005). It is the authors’ contention that introdu-

cing such a multicultural diverse reading list would build

the capacity of educators to use more culturally respon-

sive pedagogies, and provide opportunities to predomi-

nantly White communities to get to know and

understand those whom they may perceive as “Others.”

SEL and culturally relevant teaching

The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional

Learning (2013, 2015) deﬁnes SEL as the process

whereby one acquires relevant knowledge and skills

allowing the individual to recognize and manage their

emotions, make responsible decisions, establish positive

relationships and develop care and compassion for

others. The explicit teaching of SEL becomes even

more important in schools as research has shown it to

be positively associated with academic outcomes and

performance (Mayer et al., 2008), and increases proso-

cial behavior among students and lower levels of emo-

tional distress (Durlak et al., 2011; Zins et al., 2004).

Given the diversity in classrooms, there is a growing

need to facilitate the development of pro-social and

emotional skills required to confront uncomfortable

feelings in connection to “fundamental societal issues

of inequalities, injustices, poverty, and exclusion”

(Rodriguez-Izquierdo, 2018, p. 614). Hence, this capa-

city to govern one’s own emotions and manage those of

others is noted to be the hallmark of intercultural educa-

tion (Rodriguez-Izquierdo, 2018).

One of the more concrete strategies that are currently

being explored by teacher training institutes includes the

examination of multicultural children’s literature from

a critical literacy lens to encourage teacher candidates to

become better-informed risk-takers in approaching

complicated issues connected to the many aspects of

diversity (Muschell & Roberts, 2011). Yet, despite

research evidence indicating positive outcomes of

using SEL pedagogy, there is limited empirical research

on provisional eﬀectiveness for supporting the socio-

emotional growth of gifted students in particular

(Smith, 2017; Wiley & Hébert, 2014).

Reading diverse books for SEL

The transformational potential of reading books has

been documented in the literature. This can be facili-

tated through book clubs (Polleck, 2011) or using bib-

liotherapy to address anxiety among the gifted and high

ability learners (Furner, 2017). Bibliotherapy is deﬁned

as the process whereby the reader is able to identify with

a character in a book strongly enough to experience an

emotional release or catharsis alongside the characters in

the story, allowing the reader to develop insights on his

or her own developmental needs and personal situations

(Halsted, 1994; Hébert & Kent, 2000). Smith (2017)

further noted that bibliotherapy provides high-ability

students an opportunity for reader identiﬁcation with

literary characters through a thoughtful facilitated dia-

logue conducted in a safe and non-threatening environ-

ment. Diverse books, for example, have been used to

engage and empower gifted Black girls as a form of

bibliotherapy (Ford et al., 2019), providing readers the

opportunity to identify with characters whose challenges

and interests are similar to their own.

This paper argues that teachers can utilize diverse

picturebooks to facilitate the key elements of develop-

mental bibliotherapy (identiﬁcation, catharsis, insight,

and application) through the introduction of SEL com-

petencies. This refers to awareness of identity (self-

awareness), conﬂict resolution (relationship manage-

ment), regulating one’s emotions (self-management),

respect for others and empathy (social awareness), social

justice and moral responsibility (responsible decision-

making) (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and

Emotional Learning, 2013). Diverse picturebooks are

deemed to be particularly eﬀective as a resource

(Harper, 2016), since high-quality picturebooks have

been found to foster moral development (Harper &

Trostle-Brand, 2010), help develop empathy among

children (Bal & Veltkamp, 2013), and provide the foun-

dational framework for appreciation of diversity

(Harper, 2016). Moreover, research indicates how such

powerful multicultural narratives can even serve as

a catalyst for social action, as they serve to increase

students’ cultural awareness and sensitivity (Ford, 2014).

This idea is not new to gifted education with research

indicating the beneﬁts of using diverse picturebooks

among gifted children of Hispanic (Abellán-Pagnani &

Hébert, 2013) and African American (Fears-Floyd &

Hébert, 2010) descent, providing teachers with spaces

to more thoughtfully anticipate and respond to social

and emotional concerns such as struggling to ﬁt in while

being bilingual, bicultural, and gifted (Abellán-Pagnani

& Hébert, 2013). The Asian American gifted who have

always been perceived as a “model minority” (Han,

22 R. M. GARCES-BACSAL ET AL.

2018), and other linguistically diﬀerent immigrant gifted

who are socio-economically disadvantaged, would like-

wise beneﬁt from a more inclusive set of reading materi-

als that touch on their experiences and realities.

Darvin (2011) pointed out that most teacher prepara-

tion programs focus more on the “mechanical aspects of

teaching, such as creating assessments and lesson plans”

producing a mismatch between teacher education cour-

sework and actual challenges faced in diverse classrooms

as teachers “increasingly encounter culturally and poli-

tically sensitive issues in their classroom” (p. 17). Han’s

(2018) study, on the other hand, demonstrated that

there are White teachers who consciously avoid multi-

cultural literature in the classroom, with one of the

teacher respondents articulating that they felt “targeted

and criticized by what our ancestors did years ago”

(p. 603). This recent research ﬁnding is alarming, since

much of the reading materials provided to students from

morning read-aloud to assignments are pre-selected by

teachers. They naturally reﬂect teachers’ “assumptions,

conscious or not, about children, childhood, learning

and the purpose of reading far beyond merely learning

to read” (Cooper, 2007, p. 318).

Hence, it is the goal of this paper to expand the

repertoire of international and multicultural picture-

books at the teachers’ disposal. The intention is to

make educators more aware that there are complex

picturebooks out there that exist, not so much to make

them uncomfortable (Darvin, 2011), but to provide

them with a familiarity and a structure to introduce

diverse picturebooks that can serve to mitigate such

polemical issues (Nguyen, 2012). It would provide

spaces for both teachers and students to navigate their

way around social justice issues that may resonate with

advanced readers and gifted children in particular who

hunger for a critical reading and discussion (Kenney,

2013) of powerful narratives.

Method of book selection

The SEL booklist is part of a larger research project that

started at a teacher-training institute in Singapore and

continued in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Part of

the output of the research project involved the creation

of a multicultural and international picturebook data-

base mapping out themes across the ﬁve SEL competen-

cies and a catalog of diverse picture book titles depicting

exceptionalities. From this database, an early childhood

diverse booklist for SEL (Garces-Bacsal, 2020) and

a book chapter on what gifted students can learn from

multicultural picture book biographies (Garces-Bacsal,

2021) have been published, as well as teachers’ conﬂicted

discourse and practice in response to reading diverse

picturebooks (Garces-Bacsal, 2021). This paper focuses

speciﬁcally on a diverse SEL booklist for gifted learners

and advanced readers.

Description of the research team

The research team is interdisciplinary, inter-

institutional, and multi-ethnic in nature. The principal

investigator (PI) is a Filipina registered clinical psychol-

ogist specializing in the social and emotional needs of

gifted and high-ability learners. She was based in

Singapore as a teacher educator for 11 years and has

been teaching in the UAE for 3 years. The Co-PI is

a Filipino sociolinguist teaching in the United

Kingdom for the past 3 years and previously based in

Singapore for 15 years. Two other Co-PIs from the UAE

consist of a Sudanese-American special needs teacher

educator based in the UAE for over 15 years, and an

Emirati teacher educator who specializes in early child-

hood and chaired the Abu Dhabi Reads campaign for

2 years. The team is also supported by two Emirati

doctoral students who are inservice teachers in the UAE.

Procedure

While there were over 5,000 titles generated by the initial

search, including recommendations provided by librar-

ians, the authors selected picture book titles suitable for

the upper primary grade levels (aged 9–12) that ﬁt into

the competencies identiﬁed in the Collaborative for

Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (2013) fra-

mework (see codes and operational deﬁnitions).

Moreover, the researchers selected diverse picture book

titles that are relevant to traits and characteristics of

gifted students and high-ability learners, such as asking

profound philosophical questions about one’s self and

the world (Rimm et al., 2018); appreciation of ambiguity

in emotions (VanTassel-Baska, 2009) and visual meta-

phors (Rimm et al., 2018); developing a ﬁrm sense of

identity while cultivating familial (Fears-Floyd &

Hébert, 2010) and ethnic identity and pride

(Abellán-Pagnani & Hébert, 2013); heightened emo-

tional sensitivities and overexcitabilities (Mendaglio,

2021); and moral judgment and ethical responsibility

(Tirri, 2011) among others. It is also important to

point out that students not identiﬁed as gifted could

also demonstrate the above traits and characteristics.

Criteria for selection of diverse picture books

Multicultural children’s literature has been deﬁned pri-

marily to be stories written by and about people of color

(Robinson, 2013; Sims Bishop, 2003), which serve to

ROEPER REVIEW 23

highlight multiple power relations and give voice to the

marginalized. Lukens et al. (2013) expand this deﬁnition

by including diversity in ability, religion, age, sexual

orientation, socioeconomic status, political beliefs,

body image—themes that are used in this paper. The

term diverse picturebooks is used interchangeably with

(a) multicultural picturebooks as the list includes award-

winning titles published in Southeast Asia, and (b) inter-

national picture book titles deﬁned as books “originally

created and published in a country outside one’s own

and then made available through a publisher in one’s

country” (Yokota & Teale, 2017, p. 629).

The objective here is to expand the notion of relevance

(VanDerPloeg, 2012) to introduce gifted children and

high-ability readers to realities that may parallel their own

life experiences providing spaces for representation and

identiﬁcation. The intention is to make readers empathize

and appreciate lived realities other than their own. Hence,

the selection of international titles is deliberate. In fact,

Yokota and Teale (2017) raised this important question:

Why, then, should we care about books from other

countries? This is a question that calls for adults who

serve as gatekeepers to what children read to consider

their roles in introducing works to children. And it is

a question of what our hopes and aims are for children’s

literate and global lives. (p. 6)

The compound word picture book is likewise used to refer

to the complex interplay of visual images, textual narra-

tive, and overall layout and design of the book (Seraﬁni,

2009). Sipe (1998) referred to this as a synergistic relation-

ship between written text and visual images whereby there

is a more enhanced and multimodal reading experience

that can generate layered meanings as compared to when

the reader just considers the text or visual image in isola-

tion. This allows for multiple interpretations and provides

gaps to be ﬁlled by a thoughtful and insightful reader

(Ghosh, 2015). Cooper (2007) noted that in selecting

books for children: “the experience of them must allow

the child to practice some aspect of his or her potential self”

(p. 318, italics inserted). Authenticity also serves as a key

criterion (Sims Bishop, 2003; Yokota, 2015) whereby lit-

erary elements of plot, setting, theme, point of view, and

characterization all come together to form a compelling,

coherent, and moving narrative that allows readers to

form meaningful connections from the story (Harper &

Trostle-Brand, 2010).

Document analysis and operational denitions

Document analysis is deﬁned as a systematic procedure

to review or evaluate both printed and electronic docu-

ments and materials in order to elicit meaning, gain

a deeper understanding of a phenomenon, and develop

empirical knowledge (Bowen, 2009). The researchers

engaged a qualitative approach using document analysis

as the research method to examine the diverse

picturebooks.

The thematic analysis went through an iterative process

involving several phases:

(1) First-pass document review (Bowen, 2009)

whereby the research team read the picturebooks

and created a list of titles that ﬁt into the ﬁve SEL

competencies using the criteria for inclusion

mentioned earlier.

(2) The researchers used predeﬁned codes (Bowen,

2009) based on the following operational deﬁni-

tions to conduct a careful and more focused re-

reading of the titles to determine patterns, simi-

larities and diﬀerences across the titles that have

cleared the ﬁrst phase of analysis.

●

Self-awareness is deﬁned as identifying and

recognizing emotions; having accurate self-

perception; recognizing strengths, needs and

values; having self-eﬃcacy; awareness of

spirituality;

●

Self-management refers to impulse control and

stress management, self-motivation and disci-

pline, goal setting, and organizational skills;

●

Social awareness is deﬁned as having empathy,

perspective taking, appreciation of diversity,

and respect for others;

●

Relationship management is deﬁned as work-

ing cooperatively; communication, social

engagement and building relationships; nego-

tiation, refusal and conﬂict management; seek-

ing and providing help;

●

Responsible decision-making refers to problem

identiﬁcation and situation analysis, problem

solving, evaluation and reﬂection, and perso-

nal, moral and ethical responsibility.

(3) The research team discussed their choices in

Phase 2, and asked questions similar to those as

cited in Bowen (2009) as to whether there are

themes that overlap or cluster together, and

whether there are existing concepts or themes

that can be divided further into subcategories.

The subcategories for the SEL themes that are like-

wise linked to unique gifted themes are as follows, with

some overlaps of themes across the SEL codes:

●

Self-Awareness: identifying and recognizing ambi-

guity of emotions, establishing one’s identity, estab-

lishing one’s cultural identity, coming to terms with

24 R. M. GARCES-BACSAL ET AL.

one’s diﬀerentness, asking profound philosophical

questions about one’s self and the world.

●

Self-Management: resilience; dealing with and

overcoming diﬃculties; persistence and motiva-

tion; coping with loss, death, and dying; impulse

control and anger management; heightened emo-

tional sensitivities.

●

Social Awareness: appreciation of diversity, por-

trayal of exceptionalities, ethnic pride.

●

Relationship Management: refusal and conﬂict

management, communication skills; dealing with

bullying; building and developing relationships.

●

Responsible Decision-Making: problem identiﬁca-

tion, solving, evaluation and reﬂection; personal,

moral ethical responsibility; community service;

social justice.

Theoretical framework for recommended classroom

practice of the booklist

The study draws heavily from J. A. Banks (2013) pio-

neering work on multicultural education and culturally

responsive pedagogy, as well as Sims Bishop’s (2003)

ideation of diverse picturebooks serving as windows

and mirrors, providing young people the opportunity

to see themselves represented in the stories they read

and access realities diﬀerent from their own.

Hence, this study attempts to frame the presentation of

the SEL booklist with the three strategies found to facilitate

empathy and promote multicultural awareness among the

gifted as noted by Ford (2000), namely: (a) eﬀective ques-

tioning, and (b) role playing and simulations. Ford (2000)

described these as eﬀective strategies that allow students to

dig inside themselves to understand others and enable

a more immersive connection with the characters in the

story and the issues they are facing. This paper used these

strategies along with Botelho and Rudman’s (2009) critical

multicultural analysis framework for eective questioning.

Thus, educators are provided speciﬁc ways through which

the diverse SEL booklist can be introduced to their gifted

students and advanced readers (see Table 1 for this).

It is to be noted that these are only recommended

ideas and that the questions will need to be piloted in

further research studies for greater reliability and validity.

However, this is the researchers’ eﬀort to “[bridge]

diverse knowledges” by “bringing research into the teach-

ing profession” (Kincheloe et al., 2018, p. 240). Teachers

are also perceived to be “knowledge workers who reﬂect

on their professional needs and current understandings”

(Kincheloe et al., 2018, p. 241), and are thus expected to

adapt, modify, and critically analyze the suggested

questions and activities to determine its ﬁt or suitability

with the demographics of their student population.

Botelho and Rudman’s (2009) critical multicultural

analysis framework is used primarily to elicit a more

meaningful and aﬀective understanding of the diverse

picturebooks. The framework eschews the traditional

notion of the educator being the only keeper of

textual meaning, such that there is only one singular

way of interpreting the diverse narratives. Rather, the

framework encourages the reader to connect both

visual and textual narrative to their own unique life

experiences and other texts (both literary and non-

literary) and the world (Botelho & Rudman, 2009).

This is similar to what Kenney (2013) recommended

for intermediate gifted readers: using the principles

of critical literacy that focus on issues of power,

multiple perspectives, and authorial voice and

representation.

A critical multicultural analysis essentially encourages

the readers to examine the narratives from a historical

and sociopolitical lens, with an exploration of the com-

plex web of power in society, grounded in the history of

underrepresented, marginalized, and silenced cultural

groups (Botelho & Rudman, 2009). Thus, educators

could ask questions such as why is the text written in

a particular way, and get readers to imagine how else it

could have been written, and how the narrative could be

challenged (Robinson, 2013). Moreover, it is important

to highlight the dialectical authority of the educator: “as

teachers relinquish the authority of truth providers, they

assume the mature authority of facilitators of student

inquiry and problem solving” (Kincheloe et al., 2018,

p. 240). The gifted students are, therefore, expected to

be self-directed, autonomous in their learning, and cap-

able of producing their own knowledge. This framework

is adopted in some of the questions included in Table 1.

Peer debrieng

In qualitative research, the focus has now shifted from

establishing truth or facts that exist out there (Creswell,

2014), which is characteristic of the positivist para-

digm, to establishing an understanding shared by par-

ticipants, researchers, and readers (Bowen, 2009).

While there are overlaps and interconnectedness across

the ﬁve SEL competencies evident in the picturebooks,

peer debrieﬁng was used with the research team mem-

bers to identify the predominant themes in the titles

read. Multiple face-to-face discussions were done to

read the recommended titles indicated above, and the

research team conceptualized the criteria to narrow

down the selected titles.

ROEPER REVIEW 25

Table 1. Diverse social and emotional learning booklist.

(Note. The full booklist can be found at https://gatheringbooks.org/social-and-emotional-learning-sel-bookshelf/)

Book Title SEL Themes Gifted Themes Eﬀective Questioning

Role Playing and Simulation

Suggestions

Self-Awareness Booklist

The Little Black

Fish

Establishing one’s identity,

coming to terms with

one’s diﬀerentness,

existential issues

Asking profound philosophical

questions about one’s self and

the world, establishing one’s

identity and cultural sense of

self

In what way are you and the little

black ﬁsh (or Thomas or Marco the

Fox from The Antlered Ship) the

same? In what way are you

diﬀerent? If you were Marco the

Fox or the black ﬁsh, how would

you behave under similar

conditions/ circumstances?

Role play the situation wherein

Marco faced pirates and a sea

storm while navigating the

antlered ship or while little black

ﬁsh was leaving her family and

going someplace unfamiliar.

Gifted children could role play

their response to the motley

crew when invited to join the

antlered ship to travel the world:

will they stay where they are

safe, or risk being away from

everything familiar in search of

answers to questions on life’s

meaning and purpose?

The Antlered

Ship

I Am Thomas Students can be asked to

substitute their own name to

Thomas as others simulate the

whispered messages “think like

us. be like us” to the student.

My Place Establishing one’s cultural

identity and kinship with

community

What do you consider to be “my

place?” Link responses to current

refugee crisis, issues on illegal

migrants, rising xenophobia

around the world.

Students can be asked to watch

the TV series adaptation of this

picture book and asked to

develop their own version,

based on what they consider

“my place.”

Ten Tears And

One

Embrace

Identifying and recognizing

emotions

Appreciation of ambiguity in

emotions

Do you have diﬀerent types of tears?

What are these? Do you have

shades of happiness, too? Give

examples.

Students can be tasked to use the

book as mentor text for other

emotions (e.g., fear, joy) as

a way of simulating the

narrative.

Self-Management Booklist

The First

Journey

Resilience, dealing with and

overcoming diﬃculties;

persistence and

motivation; setting goals

and organizational skills

Heightened emotional

sensitivities, visual metaphors

Compare and contrast your

experience with An. How do other

children from other parts of the

world go to school?

Simulate own rituals of going to

school, juxtaposing it with An’s

experience of attending school.

After The Fall:

How

Humpty

Dumpty Got

Back Up

Again

What are other things that cannot

be “healed with bandage and

glue” to encourage discussions on

brokenness and vulnerabilities.

The narrative lends itself well into

a play with Humpty Dumpty’s

transformation: from trauma to

recovery.

This Is a Poem

That Heals

Fish

Coping with loss, death and

dying; stress

management

What is a poem for you? What

“heals” your hurt or pains?

Students can be tasked to ask

people from the community

their deﬁnition of a poem and

compile the responses.

Cry Heart but

Never Break

How do you deal with negative

emotions? Do you have someone

like Arun’s grandfather to talk to

when emotions overwhelm you?

The conversation that the children

have at the kitchen table with

Death over a cup of coﬀee, as

they discuss Sorrow and Grief, as

well as its two sisters Joy and

Delight – can be made into

a play by gifted children.

Grandfather

Gandhi

Impulse control and anger

management; self-

regulation

Meditative and breathing

techniques can be taught to

gifted students to manage

emotions.

(Continued)

26 R. M. GARCES-BACSAL ET AL.

Table 1. (Continued).

Book Title SEL Themes Gifted Themes Eﬀective Questioning

Role Playing and Simulation

Suggestions

Social Awareness Booklist

Let’s Talk

About Race

Cultural and global identity,

appreciation and respect

for culturally and

linguistically diverse

people

Ethnic identity and pride;

formation of self and cultural

identity

Share your understanding of race

and ethnicity.

Students can be asked to learn the

basics of another language from

a native speaker to simulate

challenges in communication

brought about by racial/ethnic

diversity.

Sitti’s Secrets How do you communicate with

someone whose language is

diﬀerent from yours?

What Is

A Child?

Asking profound philosophical

questions about self and the

world

Gifted students can be tasked to

write down their responses to the

book titles.

Gifted students can be asked to

make a list of their own

questions about the world and

to seek and discover the answers

through ﬁeld work or

experimentation.

What Color Is

The Wind?

Appreciation of diversity;

portrayal of

exceptionalitiesThe Amazing

Discoveries

Of Ibn Sina

Share your own “10 amazing

discoveries” about your

community.

Relationship Management Booklist

Pete And

Pickles

Communication skills;

refusal and conﬂict

management, seeking

and receiving help,

dealing with bullying

Heightened emotional

sensitivities, visual metaphors,

ambiguity in emotions

How do you deal with and respond

to people who are diﬀerent from

you, or who do not understand

you?

Pete the Pig has a predilection to

say “Ridiculous” whenever he

encounters something that does

not conform to his expectations

and view of the world. Gifted

learners can be asked to provide

alternative ways of

communicating that show

understanding and empathy,

with an eye toward building

meaningful relationships with

another.

Nasreddine Students can be asked to role play

how they respond to bullying

and exclusion.

Strictly No

Elephants

Asking profound philosophical

questions about self and the

world

Students may be encouraged to

provide possible responses to the

protagonist’s queries, bearing in

mind what is currently happening

in the world – and to raise their

own questions concerning

international conﬂict and social

justice.

Why Am

I Here?

The questions asked by the

protagonists in both stories can

be role played by students to

produce a more visceral and

immersive understanding of

what it means to be “free” and

what it is like to wonder about

one’s place in the world.

Ten Cents

A Pound

Building and developing

relationships; caring for

others

Firm sense of identity and

developing familial and ethnic

identity and pride

The author is a physician and social

justice advocate whose family

came to Canada as refugees from

Vietnam in 1979. Students could

be asked to research on

sociopolitical events in Vietnam

during this period and juxtapose

it with the dream the mother has

for her daughter, and the

daughter’s resolve to provide

a better life for her mother. How

did the author’s background

inﬂuence the writing of this story,

if at all?

Responsible Decision-Making Booklist

Maybe

Something

Beautiful

Problem identiﬁcation,

solving, evaluation and

reﬂection; personal,

moral, ethical

responsibility; service to

the community

Heightened sensitivities; moral

judgment and ethical

responsibility; asking profound

questions about one’s self and

the world; sense of social

justice

How did the protagonists in these

stories change their community

and society? Why are they

perceived as “dangerous?” Gifted

students can be asked to research

on the historical period

surrounding the picture book

biographies from Afghanistan,

Bangladesh and World War I so

that they will have greater

sociopolitical understanding of

the circumstances that prompted

Razia, Muhammad, and Jane to

develop ideas to make the

situation in their countries better

during this period.

Students may be tasked to do

something similar around their

school or community: clean up

or decorate it and transform it

into something “beautiful” and

“sustainable.”

Gifted students may also be

encouraged to provide

a proposal on a real-life

environmental issue that they

may be experiencing in their

city, and to conduct a service-

learning activity to implement

said proposal.

Message In The

Sand

Twenty-Two

Cents:

Muhammad

Yunus And

The Village

Bank

Razia’s Ray Of

Hope

Dangerous

Jane

ROEPER REVIEW 27

Personal reexivity

The question of subjectivity in qualitative research is

always present (Creswell, 2014), as the lenses that

researchers use in interpretation are naturally an out-

come of preconceived notions and life experiences

related to otherness, diversity, and giftedness (among

others), which can inﬂuence data analysis and reading

of narratives. The researchers then made disciplined

eﬀorts to engage in self-reﬂection and to value diﬀering

conceptualizations of narratives with the understanding

that stories mean diﬀerent things to diﬀerent people.

The SEL booklist

The diverse booklist is divided across the ﬁve SEL com-

petencies as deﬁned by Collaborative for Academic,

Social and Emotional Learning (2013). A brief discus-

sion of each diverse picture book title is shared here.

While the titles may be used for gifted children aged 9 to

12 years old, teachers and practitioners should be mind-

ful of the emotional readiness of each individual child,

especially with the more mature themes explored in

some of the picturebooks. See Table 1 for suggested

discussion questions and activities and Appendix A for

the full list of books listed across the SEL themes.

Self-awareness booklist

This competency has been operationally deﬁned by

Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional

Learning (2013) as one’s ability to identify and recognize

emotions. For gifted students who are able to appreciate

the ambiguity and complexity of emotions (VanTassel-

Baska, 2009), Ten Tears and One Embrace, originally

from Spain, depicts the nuances of emotions in

a lyrical manner. While most picturebooks for children

tend to present emotions in a discrete fashion—as if

there were no permeable boundaries across each shade

of feeling—this book celebrates its complexity by

demonstrating that there are diﬀerent kinds of tears for

diﬀerent types of emotions: there are laughing tears, the

ones shed in times of total mirth; or prickly tears, the

ones shed when one is angry; or even “ﬁrst time” tears

that appear “the ﬁrst time you see the sea, touch the snow,

taste chocolate, hear a song, read a poem.”

For gifted children, self-awareness may also include

existential queries about one’s identity and place in the

world. The Little Black Fish (Behrangi, 1968/2016), ori-

ginally from Iran, is a philosophical tale of a little black

ﬁsh who believes that there must be something beyond

the stream that he and his mother and all the other black

ﬁshes like him have been swimming in for what feels like

forever. While everyone perceives the stream to be the

entire world and considers the many queries of the little

black ﬁsh as impertinent and subversive even, the little

black ﬁsh is convinced that there must be more to life

than just the little stream where they are, as they swim

back and forth endlessly in the same direction. Hence,

the little black ﬁsh took an enormous risk by heading

into where the stream ended as it moved into the river,

and then the sea where the ﬁsh encountered marvels and

dangers that it did not even imagine existed. In the

Author’s Note, it was indicated that the story was ori-

ginally published in pre-revolutionary Iran in 1968 and

was regarded as an allegory for a nation whereby to be

politically diﬀerent is considered dangerous. Hence, this

seemingly innocuous children’s story of a black ﬁsh

daring to question the smallness of its existence and

wanting to integrate with other kinds of creatures was

originally banned in Iran.

Two other diverse titles that highlight this sense of

questioning about one’s identity and one’s purpose in

life can be seen in The Antlered Ship (Slater, 2017) and

I Am Thomas (Gleeson, 2011). In the former, the reader

gets introduced to a fox named Marco who asks a lot of

questions about the world around him: Why don’t trees

ever talk? How deep does the sun go when it sinks into the

sea? Unfortunately for him, everyone else is oblivious to

the burning questions that plague him. When an

antlered ship came where he lived, he decided to join

a motley crew of three deer and a ﬂock of pigeons.

Marco wanted to go someplace where his questions

can be answered, where meaning can be found.

Marco’s plight is not unlike that of many gifted children

whose incessant questions about the world (Rimm et al.,

2018) may not be understood by same-aged peers who

do not share similar concerns.

In I Am Thomas (Gleeson, 2011), the reader is intro-

duced to a young man who claimed that “I am not the

child I once was.” This statement makes sense as the

reader ﬂips through the pages, and witnesses snickering

classmates, angry school teachers, and dismayed parents

with disappointed tears in their eyes, all the while with

messages “do as we say . . . think like us . . . be like us”

conveyed to Thomas by authority ﬁgures and signiﬁcant

others. There is a distinct sense of entrapment,

a conﬁning need to conform to societal expectations,

and an institutionalized attempt to suppress one’s spirit,

sense of joy, and identity. This is an emotionally power-

ful and intense book that may help gifted readers ﬁnd

their voice amidst the reverberations of “should-be’s”

and “must-do’s” and “have-to’s” implicitly and explicitly

conveyed to them by society. Balancing this voice with

the need to take counsel from well-meaning adults is

a further rich topic for discussion among precocious

28 R. M. GARCES-BACSAL ET AL.

readers who may sometimes feel that they do not have to

listen to authority ﬁgures, a way of thinking that can

potentially lead to long-term negative outcomes for

gifted children of color. The book provides the perfect

opportunity to navigate through these complex issues

and concerns.

For culturally diﬀerent gifted children, one’s identity

or sense of self may be inextricably linked with one’s

cultural or familial roots (Abellán-Pagnani & Hébert,

2013; Fears-Floyd & Hébert, 2010). In My Place

(Wheatley, 1989), a picture book from Australia, this

notion of cultural interconnectedness is explored in

a clever fashion. While the ﬁrst full-page spread opens

to 1988, the second page takes the reader to 1978, until

one gets to 1788 in the ﬁnal page. It is an ingenious way

of highlighting Australia’s history in 10-year periods,

through snapshots told from the perspective of diﬀerent

children living in each space, highlighting how the coun-

try has evolved over time. The reader sees families from

Greece, Ireland, California, and Germany juxtaposed

with the changing landscape. A critical discussion

prompt that can be used among gifted readers is how

people who are perceived as outsiders or “foreigners” are

demonstrated in the narrative to have always been in

this place, calling it “My Place” from as far back as

a hundred years.

These diverse picturebooks introduce a level of com-

plexity beyond simply identifying and recognizing emo-

tions or having accurate self-perception. They provide

opportunities to reﬂect more deeply on one’s sense of

self and identity and one’s purpose in the world.

Moreover, there are spaces for readers to recognize

“emotional blends and contradictory feeling states”

(VanTassel-Baska, 2009, p. 122) through the narratives.

Self-management booklist

This SEL competency deals with the ability of the person

to regulate one’s emotions and control one’s impulses.

In Grandfather Gandhi (Gandhi & Hegedus, 2014), the

grandchild of Mahatma Gandhi, Arun, recounts an epi-

sode in his life when he was 12 years old, when he lived

with his grandfather on the Sevagram Ashram. Arun

had trouble containing his anger and resentment over

having to share his Grandfather with so many people

who seem to require his attention all the time. When

Arun ﬂared up over a soccer incident, he ran to his

Grandfather’s hut and cried out to his Bapuji. His grand-

father spoke about how anger can both cut and strike

like lightning; and how it can similarly be transformed

and illuminate a person, turning darkness into light.

This concept of channeling anger bringing about an

enlightened transformation is something that would

appeal to gifted learners who are able to easily appreciate

the mutability of one’s emotions, and the capacity to

transcend one’s anger, subsequently transforming it into

something positive and productive.

Self-management also deals with self-motivation and

discipline as well as goal setting and organizational

skills. In The First Journey (Quang, 2017), an award-

winning title from Vietnam, the young boy An needed

to brave the ﬂoods to attend school during the “ﬂoating

season” when the Mekong Delta overﬂows. The entire

narrative shows his journey in the river, as he faces

heavy rain and the many real dangers that lurk in the

waters, while traveling along the dark Melaleuca Swamp.

Yet, he perseveres and continues on, as this is just

another day in his life, as he attends school with all his

other friends, most of whom go through the exact same

thing.

Another aspect under self-management is one’s capa-

city to manage life’s challenges or diﬃculties. Santat’s

(2017) After the Fall tells the aftermath of what hap-

pened to Humpty Dumpty, after the fall, and how he was

able to overcome his fears and anxieties. While the

wonderful men from The Kings County Hospital

patched him up well and good, Humpty realizes that

“there were some parts that couldn’t be healed with ban-

dages and glue.” It is an extraordinary tale of courage,

self-determination, and a shaky yet ﬁrm resolve to not

allow one’s anxieties to rule one’s life.

Two other picturebooks that deal with managing

stress and diﬃculties are Cry Heart, But Never Break

(Ringtved, 2016) from Denmark and This Is A Poem

That Heals Fish (Simeon, 2007) from France. Both

European picturebooks deal with loss and grieving espe-

cially when a loved one dies, and how one is able to

comfort one’s self through beauty and poetry. There is

the recognition in both books of how sorrow stands with

joy, and how grief is juxtaposed with delight. This

knowledge is meant to make the pain somewhat bear-

able with the understanding that underneath the pain

lies a love bigger than the world.

These diverse picturebooks move beyond merely pro-

viding gifted readers a few strategies to overcome their

diﬃculties and manage their emotions. Rather, there is

a sense of empowerment embedded in the narratives

that bring about aﬀective growth and transformation,

which are elements that make up emotional intelligence

(VanTassel-Baska, 2009).

Social awareness booklist

This SEL competency helps students to develop an

appreciation of diversity and a respect for others who

are deemed to be diﬀerent from them. In Lester’s Let’s

ROEPER REVIEW 29

Talk About Race (Lester, 2005), the skin and bones of

race and all it signiﬁes is explored with refreshing can-

dor. The narrative text serves as an invitation for a casual

chat whereby a discussion on race and story, its roots

and beginnings can be told with unﬂinching yet uplifting

truth. Lester pointed out that “no race is better than your

race” and that anyone who says otherwise may be feeling

“bad about themselves. Because they are afraid.” The

narrative encourages the young reader to see what is

“beneath our skin” and to see one another as an indivi-

dual with a distinct story to tell.

This idea of connectedness, regardless of skin color or

ethnicity, is also evident in Alemagna’s, 2016 What Is

A Child? which celebrates childhood in all its glories,

with some musings on what it means to be a grown-up.

Children are portrayed in varied hues and states, with

delightful character sketches capturing youth and inno-

cence. The awareness of what it means to grow older and

how to navigate linguistic diﬀerences is portrayed in Sitti’s

Secrets (Nye, 1994/1997) where the reader gets to know

young Mona who visits her grandmother in a small

Palestinian village. Mona encounters diﬃculties in the

beginning as she and her Grandmother, whom she calls

Sitti, do not speak the same language and are only able to

communicate through Mona’s father who serves as

a cultural broker and a translator for both of them. In

this story, the reader sees the symbols of love and expres-

sions of aﬀection that transcend linguistic and cultural

barriers.

This celebration of diverse cultural realities can further

be explored in the Amazing Discoveries of Ibn Sina

(Sharafeddine, 2013/2015) a picture book biography of

a Persian philosopher, scientist, and physician who is con-

sidered to be one of the brightest minds of the Islamic

Golden Age according to author Sharafeddine (2013/2015).

Polette (2009) noted that sharing diverse picture book

biographies with gifted students would allow them to

fully appreciate the humanity of eminent individuals and

the many challenges that they had to overcome in order for

them to reach their level of expertise.

In What Color Is the Wind (Herbauts, 2011/2016), the

gifted reader learns about empathy and perspective tak-

ing, which is also part of the social awareness compe-

tency, with a thoughtful blind boy as the main

protagonist in the story. The boy, described as the “little

giant” asks everyone he meets: from the wolf to an

elephant to the mountain and the rain, what the color

of the wind is. Each answer is more poetic than the last,

with the art providing a more nuanced dimension to the

narrative with cut outs and tactile pages, as the reader

feels raindrops in the pages.

These diverse picturebooks do not just provide

opportunities for appreciation of cultural and linguistic

diversity, but inspire diﬃcult conversations about race

and privilege, sight and wonder, and the various excep-

tionalities that make up a complex human being.

Relationship management booklist

This SEL competency refers to working cooperatively,

seeking and providing help, conﬂict management,

practicing eﬀective communication and building rela-

tionships. In Berkeley Breathed’s (2008) Pete and

Pickles, the reader is introduced to a predictable and

pragmatic pig named Pete who lived a seemingly-stress

-free existence governed by schedules and quiet dinners

in front of the television; that is, until an elephant

named Pickles came into his life. Pickles was a circus

elephant who randomly chanced upon Pete’s house,

ostensibly hiding from the Circus Master who kept

her in chains. The story evocatively demonstrates how

two strikingly dissimilar creatures managed to build

such a beautiful and meaningful relationship together

despite their very clear diﬀerences.

In Nasreddine (Weulersse, 2007/2013), a folktale that is

said to have originated in Turkey, the reader gets to

appreciate what conﬂict management is through the story

of a young boy named Nasreddine, who felt deeply aﬀected

by the people who were making fun of him and his father

Mustafa. Nasreddine tried to change his behavior to

address the criticism that he hears from other people,

only to hear another disparaging remark from diﬀerent

people. This went on until his father sat down with him

and gently advised him to listen to his own counsel, rather

than attempt to please everybody around him.

Managing relationships do not only mean resolving

conﬂicts, it also refers to building and maintaining good

interpersonal relationships. In Ten Cents a Pound (Tran-

Davies, 2018) the reader gets to know the relationship

between mother and daughter who are experiencing

impoverished conditions. The daughter acknowledges

her mother’s “calloused and blistered” feet, and her

“coarsened and scratched” hands and promised to stay

with her mother. Her mother, however, declares: “Ten

cents a pound is what I’ll earn to buy these books and set

you free.” It is a moving depiction of the sacriﬁce each

one is willing to make to provide help and assistance to

each other. It also signiﬁes a mother’s dream for her

child, and the child’s determination to succeed to ensure

that her mother’s sacriﬁce is not in vain.

In Strictly No Elephants (Mantchev, 2015) a young

boy was excited to bring his elephant to Pet Club Day

only to be informed upon arriving at the venue that they

have a “Strictly No Elephants” policy. The boy was deeply

discouraged until he chanced upon another pet owner

whose skunk was ostracized by other pets and their

30 R. M. GARCES-BACSAL ET AL.

owners in the Pet Club Day. By working cooperatively,

these new friends decided to form another group with

other rejected pets and their pet-owners, one where “All

are welcome.” While deceptively-simple, this can also be

considered as an allegory to the borders that are present

in the world marking those who are deemed acceptable

in contrast to those who are considered as outsiders or

“foreign.”

Why Am I Here? (Orbeck-Nilssen, 2014/2016) pub-

lished originally in Norway, shows what happens when

the issue of “conﬂict” is taken to a macro-level with

a young boy asking quite a number of philosophical

questions about who he is and his place in the world.

At one point in his musings, he asked: What if I had to

move from place to place? And the only things I could keep

were what I was able to carry with me. What would it be

like to live like that? This is accompanied by an image of

a boat ﬁlled with what could be perceived as refugees in

the middle of a stormy sea.

These diverse picturebooks introduce a level of com-

plexity in managing conﬂicts and developing relation-

ships. They also surface issues about otherness and

exclusion, and how to nurture deep connections

among human beings, even those deemed as diﬀerent

from one’s self.

Responsible decision-making booklist

This SEL competency refers to problem identiﬁcation

and situation analysis and developing eﬀective problem-

solving skills after a thorough evaluation and reﬂection.

In Maybe Something Beautiful (Campoy & Howell,

2016) and Message in the Sand (Aserappa & Obemio,

2008) the child protagonists in the story identify an issue

in their community (a bleak and gray city lacking in

color and beauty in the former, and a local mining

company dumping waste into a river in the latter) and

proactively do something to solve the problem. While

there is a stark simplicity in the messages conveyed,

there is also courage and earnest truth in the narrative

that is empowering.

In Razia’s Ray of Hope (2013), Yoo’s Twenty-Two

Cents (2014), and Slade’s Dangerous Jane (2017), the

high-ability learners are introduced to picture book bio-

graphies of courageous individuals from Afghanistan,

Bangladesh, and the United States respectively. Such

picture book biographies serve to provide high-ability

learners the opportunity to not just regard themselves

but one another as having equally high potential, espe-

cially when the biographies are coming from diverse

populations (Fears-Floyd & Hébert, 2010) similar to

the ones shared in this list.

From the creation of Razia’s Ray Of Hope

Foundation meant “to improve the lives of women and

children in Afghanistan through education;” to

Muhammad Yunus winning the Nobel Peace Prize for

developing the revolutionary economic concept of

a Village Bank or micro-lending in Bangladesh in

Twenty-Two Cents (Yoo, 2014); to Jane Addams pro-

viding a home to impoverished refugees and her active

eﬀorts to promote peace during World War I, even at

the expense of her being regarded by the Federal

Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as “the most dangerous

woman in America” – these are all edifying real-life

narratives that demonstrate a commitment to social

justice. The stories provide clear evidence of personal,

moral and ethical responsibility among visionaries who

have dedicated their lives in service of others and

making the world a better place. Moreover, the narra-

tives demonstrate how one’s profound sense of social

justice can be used to empower and improve the con-

ditions of the marginalized sectors of the community.

This can be linked to recent research studies (Enriquez,

2014; Husband, 2019) demonstrating how diverse pic-

turebooks can promote racial justice and how open

dialogs about issues of power and oppression can facil-

itate a deeper critical consciousness of injustice in the

world (Freire, 1973).

Discussion and implications

One of the challenges in introducing diverse books

among teachers is that it forces educators to take on

instructional practices that make gifted students “exam-

ine multiple viewpoints” while highlighting underlying

sociopolitical issues that disrupt common understand-

ings prompting students to “take action and promote

social justice” (Norris et al., 2012, p. 59). However, it is

the authors’ contention that for gifted educators to

remain relevant in an increasingly diverse classroom

environment, educators, and practitioners would need

to be more cognizant of authentic, subtle, and thought-

ful narratives that would prompt gifted learners to

examine their own ideals and to make meaning of not

just their personal identity, but to also navigate this

alongside a deep understanding and respect of their

cultural and global identities, and how they can actively

contribute to their communities. There is a possibility

that introducing such narratives can produce what is

known as “cognitive disequilibrium” (Szecsi et al.,

2010, p. 45) among teachers. However, this state of

being unsettled has served to compel teachers to open

themselves to more pluralistic approaches (Szecsi et al.,

2010) and to make sense of potential conﬂicts in their

discourse and practice in promoting a more

ROEPER REVIEW 31

transformative pedagogy (Garces-Bacsal, 2021). As such,

there is a palpable need for more professional develop-

ment training that touches on this particular aspect,

while providing educators opportunities to practice the

use of diverse text-sets with their own students.

Gopalakrishnan (2011, p. 34) refers to an “urgent

need for multicultural children’s literature to permeate

the curriculum in schools” as this will provide the foun-

dational framework to build an appreciation of diversity

that goes beyond a tokenistic and touristic understand-

ing of people from around the world (Styles, 2013) that

is customarily reduced only to food, fashion, and festival

(Ho, 2012). J. Banks (2015) pointed out that this cursory

study of ethnic cultures and experiences, commonly

referred to as the 3Fs (Ho, 2012), should give way to

a more systemic school reform that enforces marked

institutional changes that will lead the way to

a transformative and social justice approach to multi-

cultural education. This need for more multicultural

materials and strategies is likewise mentioned by

VanTassel-Baska (2009) in her recommendations on

tailoring aﬀective curriculum and instruction for low-

income and minority students. Evidently, educators

would have to expand their database of diverse literature

to expose gifted learners to diﬀerent ways of seeing and

being in the world. In addition to the critical multi-

cultural approach (Botelho & Rudman, 2009) men-

tioned here, educators can expand their “pedagogical

toolkit” (Ford et al., 2019) by including a critical reader’s

response approach (Enriquez, 2014; Husband, 2019) to

encourage students to draw from their lived experiences

and articulate their emotions and make meaning of the

diverse narratives shared with them. It would likewise be

good to document both teachers’ and students’

responses to diverse narratives in future research to

encourage practitioners to be more reﬂective and mind-

ful of their own classroom practice.

Researchers and practitioners are also increasingly

acknowledging how anti-immigrant racist rhetoric,

xenophobia, and state-sanctioned violence permeate

daily discourse especially as of recent (Kinloch, 2020),

emphasizing the urgency to teach for social justice

(Darling-Hammond, 2017) and culturally responsive

pedagogies (Gay, 2018). Thus, in the discussion of the

SEL booklist, teachers and practitioners could ask ques-

tions related to the race and ethnicity of the author and

illustrator of the books to surface issues connected to

race, positionality, and voice. In these conversations,

educators would need to be mindful of critical race

theory, which highlights the intersectionality framework

(Ladson-Billings, 2021) demonstrating how individuals

can each represent multiple and complex identities

across race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and religion

to name a few, to counter notions of essentialism. It is

important for teachers to recognize how these hybrid

identities come together to “contribute to both academic

achievement outcomes and gifted identiﬁcation” as

Peters (2021, p. 1) pointed out. It is hoped that this

SEL booklist would encourage more teachers to seek

out similar titles that would make students under their

guidance feel less invisible, their experiences validated,

and allow young gifted readers to serve as witnesses to

deeply moving narratives that would inspire them to

serve as positive agents of change in the world.

Disclosure statement

No potential conﬂict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This study is supported by the United Arab Emirates

University, Fund Code 31D120.

ORCID

Rhoda Myra Garces-Bacsal http://orcid.org/0000-0003-

4839-9084

Ruanni Tupas

http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2569-702X

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ROEPER REVIEW 35

Appendix A: Full list of books listed across SEL

themes

Self-Awareness

Behrangi, S., Mesghali, F. (illus)., & Rassi, A. (trans.) (2016).

The little black ﬁsh. Tiny Owl Publishing. (Iran).

Gleeson, L, & Greder, A. (illus). (2011). I am Thomas. Allen &

Unwin. (Australia).

Sanmamed, M., Azabal, M. (illus)., & Brokenbrow, J. (trans).

(2016). Ten tears and one embrace. Cuento de Luz. (Spain).

Slater, D., & The Fan Brothers (illus). (2017). The antlered

ship. Beach Lane Books. (USA).

Wheatley, N., & Rawlins, D. (illus.). (1989). My place. Kane/

Miller Book Publishers. (Australia).

Self-Management

Gandhi, A., Hegedus, B., & Turk, E. (illus). (2014). Grandfather

Gandhi. Atheneum Books for Young Readers. (India/USA).

Quang, P. N., & Lien, H. K. (illus). (2017). The ﬁrst journey.

Scholastic. (Vietnam).

Ringtved, G., Pardi, C. (illus)., & Moulthrop, R. (trans). (2016).

Cry heart, but never break. Enchanted Lion Books. (Denmark).

Santat, D. (2017). After the fall: How Humpty Dumpty got back

up again. Roaring Brook Press. (USA).

Simeon, J-P., Tallec, O. (illus.)., & Bedrick, C. Z. (trans). (2007).

This is a poem that heals ﬁsh. Enchanted Lion Books. (France).

Social Awareness

Alemagna, B., (author/illus). & Bennett, A. (trans). What is

a child? (2016, ﬁrst published 2008). Tate Publishing. (Italy).

Herbauts, A. (author/illus.). (2016, ﬁrst published 2011). What

color is the wind? Enchanted Lion Books. (Belgium).

Lester, J., & Barbour, K. (illus.). (2005). Let’s talk about race.

Amistad Press. (USA).

Sharafeddine, F., & Ali, I. M. (illus.). (2015, ﬁrst published

2013). The amazing discoveries of Ibn Sina. Groundwood

Books. (Lebanon).

Nye, N. S., & Carpenter, N. (illus.) (1997, ﬁrst published 1994).

Sitti’s secrets. Aladdin. (USA/ Palestine).

Relationship Management

Breathed, B. (author/illus.). Pete and pickles. (2008). Philomel

Books. (USA).

Orbeck-Nilssen, C., & Duzakin, A. (illus.). (2016, ﬁrst pub-

lished 2014). Why am i here? Eerdmans Books for Young

Readers. (Norway).

Mantchev, L., & Yoo, T. (illus.). (2015). Strictly no elephants.

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. (USA).

Tran-Davies, N. N., & Bisaillon, J. (illus.). (2018). Ten cents

a pound. Second Story Press. (Vietnam | Canada).

Weulersse, O., & Dautremer, R. (illus.). (2013, ﬁrst published in

2007). Nasreddine. Eerdmans Books for Young Readers. (France).

Responsible Decision-Making

Aserappa, C., & Obemio, R. (2008). Message in the sand.

Canvas.ph. (Philippines).

Campoy, F. I., Howell, T., & Lopez, R. (illus.). (2016). Maybe

something beautiful: How art transformed a neighborhood.

HMH Books for Young Readers. (USA).

Slade, S., & Ratterree, A. (illus.). (2017). Dangerous Jane.

Peachtree Publishers. (USA).

Suneby, E., & Verelst, S. (illus.). (2013). Razia’s ray of hope:

One girl’s dream of an education. Kids Can Press. (Afghanistan

| USA).

Yoo, P., & Akib, J. (illus.). (2014). Twenty-two cents:

Muhammad Yunus And The Village Bank. Lee and Low

Books. (Bangladesh).

Notes on contributors

Rhoda Myra Garces-Bacsal is serving as

the Assistant Dean for Research and

Graduate Studies for the College of

Education, United Arab Emirates

University. [email protected]

Najwa Mohammed Alhosani is serving as

the Dean for the College of Education and

is an Associate Professor with the

Department of Curriculum and

Instruction, United Arab Emirates

University. [email protected]

Hala Elhoweris is serving as Chair of the

Department of Special Education, College

of Education, United Arab Emirates

University. [email protected]

Ruanni Tupas teaches at the Department

of Culture, Communication and Media,

Institute of Education, University College

London. He is an Associate Editor of the

International Journal of the Sociology of

Language. [email protected]

36 R. M. GARCES-BACSAL ET AL.