Small Acts, Big Lessons: Gratitude and Kindness in Higher Education through picturebooks

This paper investigates how the concept of gratitude can be cultivated in young adults an especially first-year university students through engagement with picturebooks, focusing on Marta Bartol’s Small Acts of Kindness (2021). Adopting a theoretical perspective, the study integrates insights from picturebook studies, gratitude research in positive psychology, and reader-response and ethical literary criticism. The argument is that picturebooks—although often considered children’s literature—possess unique narrative and aesthetic features that can foster emotional literacy, empathy, and ethical awareness in adult learners. Drawing on the work of (Nikolajeva & Scott, 2013; Sipe, 1998, 2008), and more recent contributions from Iordanaki and Kalogirou (2020) on wordless picturebooks, the paper outlines how visual narratives engage readers in interpretive and emotional processes. These insights are connected to psychological theories of gratitude (Watkins, Emmons, & McCullough, 2004; Watkins, 2014), highlighting gratitude’s role in prosocial behavior and well-being, and to reader-response and ethical criticism (Rosenblatt, 1978; Nussbaum, 1997), which explain how literature evokes empathy and moral imagination. The case study of Small Acts of Kindness, a wordless narrative that depicts a ripple effect of kindness across a community, exemplifies these ideas in practice. Pedagogical implications are discussed, suggesting that integrating picturebooks into higher education curricula can enrich students’ intellectual, emotional, and ethical development. The paper concludes that picturebooks are powerful cultural artifacts capable of nurturing gratitude, empathy, and ethical sensibility in learners of all ages, thereby contributing to a more holistic and humanistic higher education.