Westcoast Child Care Resource Centre

Inspiring & Promoting Excellence in Child Care & Early Learning

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Resource List: Additional Recommended Books for ECE & Caregivers

The role of an early childhood educator in shaping young minds is both profound and dynamic. The foundation you help build in a child's early years influence their lifelong learning, emotional well-being, and social development. The following list encompasses a range of topics and have been selected to empower your early learning programming and care. Early Childhood Educators and others who support parents and children in their work are welcome to borrow from our special collection—we look forward to meeting you at the WELL. Please click to download a printable PDF.

  • The Compassionate Classroom: Relationship Based Teaching and Learning
    By Sura Hart and Victoria Kindle Hodson.
    A practical guide for creating emotionally safe learning environments.
  • Seen & Heard: Children’s Rights In Early Childhood Education
    By Ellen Lynn Hall and Jennifer Kofkin Rudkin.
    Using examples from a Reggio inspired school for children from 6 weeks to 6 years, the authors emphasize the importance of children’s rights and our responsibility as adults to hear their voices.
  • Socially Strong, Emotionally Secure: 50 Activities To Promote Resilience In Young Children
    By Nefertiti Bruce and Karen B. Cairone.
    This book is a guide to promoting emotional resilience through supportive, caring practices, home and school partnerships, experiences, routines, play, and through the learning environment.
  • Love Builds Brain
    By Jean Clinton MD
    Jean Clinton lays out the early years’ journey of attachment, self-regulation, connection, resilience and well-being, and does so with scientific explanations measured out in understandable doses. This book is full of deeply researched wisdom, offered in a conversational style.
  • Set for Life: An Early Childhood Teacher’s Guide to Supporting Strong Emotional Foundations and Successful Social Relationships
    By Michelle M. Forrester
    The guide shares practical strategies for supporting strong emotional connections in early childhood settings.
  • Getting to the Heart of Learning: Social-emotional Skills Across the Early Childhood Curriculum
    By Ellen Booth Church
    The best learning emerges in a classroom community where children feel accepted and appreciated for their ideas and actives. This book shows teachers and caregivers how easy it is to foster children’s sense of curiosity through group explorations that promote social connection and positive development.
  • How Culture Shapes Social-emotional Development: Implications for Practice in Infant-Family Programs
    By Monimalika Day
    This book examines how culture shapes children’s fundamental learning about themselves, their emotions, and their way of interacting and relating to others.
  • Socially Strong, Emotionally Secure: 50 Activities to Promote Resilience in Young Children
    By Nefertiti Bruce
    For adults working with children ages 3-8, this book contains strategies and activities that support healthy social and emotional development in young children.
  • Roots of Empathy: Changing the World, Child by Child
    By Mary Gordon
    Gordon aims to explain the value of and how best to nurture empathy and social and emotional literacy in all children – and thereby reduce aggression, antisocial behaviours, and bullying.