Teaching Empathy to Young Children Through Fantasy Stories — Why It Works and How to Start Tonight

My son had a best friend in first grade who moved away mid-year.

He did not talk about it much. He was six and did not yet have the language for grief or loss or the particular loneliness of a desk that used to belong to someone you liked. But I could see it in him — a quietness that had not been there before, a reluctance to invest in new friendships that might also disappear.

We were reading together one evening — a picture book about a character who had been left behind, who did not understand why the world had rearranged itself without asking permission — and my son looked up from the page and said "that's how I feel about Timmy."

He could not have said it directly. He had tried and the words had not come. But the character found them for him.

That moment is the one I return to every time someone asks me why I write fantasy for children. Not because fantasy is escapism — though it can be — but because the right story creates exactly enough distance from a child's own experience to make the impossible possible.

The impossible thing being: talking about how you actually feel.

That is empathy in action. And it starts with story.

What Empathy Actually Is — and Is Not

Before we talk about how to build it, it helps to be clear about what empathy actually is — because it is frequently misunderstood.

Empathy is not sympathy. Sympathy is feeling sorry for someone from a safe distance. Empathy is the ability to understand and share another person's experience — to see the world through their eyes, feel what they might feel, and recognize their inner life as real and valid even when it is different from your own.

It is also not a fixed trait that children either have or do not have. Empathy is a skill. It develops gradually, through practice, through modelling, and critically — through story.

Research consistently shows that children who are read to regularly — particularly fiction that features characters with complex emotional lives — develop stronger empathy than children who are not. Not because they are told to feel empathy. But because they practice it every time they follow a character through an experience that is not their own.

Every time a child wonders what a character is feeling, they are exercising the same neural pathways that allow them to wonder what a classmate is feeling. Every time a story makes them feel something real about a fictional situation, they are building the emotional vocabulary and imaginative capacity that empathy requires.

Reading to your child is an empathy workout. And fantasy in particular — with its otherworldly characters, unfamiliar worlds, and creatures who experience the full range of human feeling in extraordinary circumstances — is one of the most powerful empathy-building tools available to a parent or teacher.

Why Fantasy Works Better Than You Might Think

When I first started writing The Grumble Toad Adventures some people questioned the fantasy element. Would children not learn more from stories set in the real world — in classrooms and playgrounds and homes that looked like their own?

My answer was and remains: not necessarily. And here is why.

Fantasy creates distance. And distance — counterintuitively — creates safety.

A child who cannot talk about being bullied might talk freely about why the villagers in the story are afraid of the glowing creature in the forest. A child who cannot admit they feel like they do not belong might completely lose themselves in a story about a character who does not fit anywhere — until they find their place.

The Toxic Grumble in my second book — Amara and the Toxic Trouble — is misunderstood by everyone around them. They glow. They glitch. Their very presence makes others nervous. And instead of being welcomed, they are feared.

My son recognized something of himself in that character the first time I read the story to him. Not because he glowed or glitched — but because he knew what it felt like to be in a room and sense that the room was not quite built for you.

He did not say this directly. He never does. But he asked me to read that book four times in a row. And that told me everything.

Fantasy gives children characters who carry feelings too big for the real world to contain — and in doing so, makes those feelings manageable. Nameable. Survivable.

The Empathy Gap — What Research Says

Studies on empathy development in young children consistently identify a gap between knowing that others have feelings and genuinely understanding what those feelings might be like from the inside.

Most children understand by age four or five that other people have different thoughts and feelings from their own — what developmental psychologists call theory of mind. But the ability to imaginatively inhabit another person's experience — to feel with them rather than simply acknowledge that they feel — develops more slowly and requires active cultivation.

Story is one of the most effective cultivation tools we have.

Research confirms that the teacher-child relationship and primary caregiver relationships play a critical role in supporting a child's sense of security and emotional competency — and that the adults in a child's life are instrumental in creating the conditions for genuine social-emotional development. Amazon

What this means in practice is that reading together — the adult and the child, side by side, moving through a story at the same pace — is itself an empathy-building act. The shared attention, the shared emotional response, the conversations that arise naturally from the story — all of it builds the neural infrastructure that empathy requires.

You do not have to teach empathy. You have to create the conditions in which it grows. And one of the most reliable conditions is a good story, read together, with space for the conversation that follows.

How to Use Fantasy Stories to Build Empathy — Practically

Here are the specific things that work — not in theory but in practice, tested with my own child and refined over years of creating story-based SEL resources.

Ask about the character before you ask about your child.

After reading, start with the character rather than with your child's experience. "How do you think the Toxic Grumble felt when everyone ran away?" is far easier to answer than "have you ever felt like nobody wanted to be around you?" The character creates the opening. The personal connection follows naturally — or it does not, and that is fine too. The story is still doing its work.

Follow your child's lead — not the lesson.

You might read a book hoping to open a conversation about kindness — and your child might want to talk about the funny bit in the middle. Follow them. The conversation they are ready to have is more valuable than the one you planned. Trust that the story is working even when it does not look like it.

Name what you notice in characters.

When a character experiences something in the story, name the feeling out loud. "She looks really scared in this picture." "I wonder if he's feeling lonely." You are not telling your child what to feel — you are modelling the act of noticing and naming feelings in others, which is the foundation of empathy.

Share your own response.

"That part made me feel sad too." "I would have been really scared in that situation." When a child hears a trusted adult naming their own emotional response to a story, it normalizes the act of having and sharing feelings. It shows them that big feelings in response to stories — and to life — are not weakness. They are how a human heart works.

Revisit the same stories more than once.

A book that meant one thing at five will mean something different at seven and something else again at nine. Children's empathy grows and deepens as they grow. The same story offers new entry points at every stage. My son and I returned to the same handful of books repeatedly throughout his childhood — and the conversations we had at eight about a book we first read at five were richer than anything we said the first time around.

The Books That Build Empathy Most Effectively

Through years of searching for the right books for my son — and then creating my own — these are the qualities I look for in a book specifically designed to build empathy in children ages four to ten.

A character whose inner life is genuinely complex — not just happy or sad but confused, conflicted, misunderstood, afraid of the right things for the wrong reasons.

A situation that is unfamiliar enough to feel safe — which is where fantasy earns its place. The Mycelium Undergrowth is not a classroom or a playground. It is a magical forest. And yet every child who reads about the Toxic Grumble knows exactly what it feels like to walk into a room and sense that everyone is slightly afraid of you.

A resolution that is honest rather than tidy. Real empathy is not built by stories that wrap up too cleanly. It is built by stories that sit with the difficulty long enough for the child to feel it alongside the character — and then show a way through that feels earned.

The Grumble Toad Adventures was built around these three principles. Every book in the series features a character whose emotional journey is specific, honest, and deeply human — even when the character is a glowing toad or a wizard whose potions always pop.

Amara and the Toxic Trouble is the one I recommend first for building empathy specifically — because the Toxic Grumble's experience of being feared and misunderstood before being truly seen is one of the most powerful mirrors available for any child who has ever felt on the outside of belonging.

Find the complete Grumble Toad Adventures series and all companion resources at:

lunaastherastudio.etsy.com — digital downloads

linktr.ee/sandraianeholliday — all books and platforms

A Note for Teachers and School Counselors

Everything in this post applies in the classroom and the counseling room as powerfully as it does at home.

The projective space that fantasy creates is just as effective in a group setting as it is one-on-one. A morning meeting built around a character's dilemma. A small group discussion using a picture book as the starting point. A one-on-one session where the story does the opening work so the child does not have to.

The Grumble Toad Adventures Book Companion includes discussion guides specifically designed for teachers and counselors — giving you structured, story-based entry points into conversations about empathy, acceptance, belonging, and courage that meet children exactly where they are.

Available as an instant digital download on Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers.

Where to Start Tonight

You do not need a special curriculum, a dedicated time slot, or a perfectly curated library.

You need a book. A child. And fifteen minutes before bed.

Read something together tonight that features a character whose experience is different from your child's own. Ask one question about how that character might be feeling. Then listen — really listen — to whatever comes back.

You are not teaching a lesson. You are building a muscle. And like all muscles it gets stronger every time you use it.

My son is proof of that. So is every child who has ever looked up from a page and said something true that they could not have said any other way.

That moment — that bridge between the story and the self — is where empathy lives. And it starts tonight, on the couch, with a book you already own.

Sandra M. Holliday is the creator of LunaAstheraStudio and the author of The Grumble Toad Adventures — a five-book children's fantasy series exploring social emotional learning through the magical world of the Mycelium Undergrowth. The series was born from her experience watching her son navigate learning and emotional challenges in elementary school — and her lifelong belief that the right story, at the right moment, changes everything. 

Find the complete Grumble Toad Adventures series and all companion resources at:

lunaastherastudio.etsy.com — digital downloads

linktr.ee/sandraianeholliday — all books and platforms