From research to real life: The power of storybooks in supporting children's learning and wellbeing

Recent years have seen heightened awareness and action surrounding children's mental health and wellbeing, with younger ages facing increasingly complex topics and issues. With evidence showing that emotional and social wellness in early childhood sets the stage for lifelong health, the need for effective tools and credible resources is more pressing than ever. 

As informed by research, children are highly sensitive to their environments and experiences, which underpin development and coping skills. Yet, while primary care providers and educators are keen to support children in facing and managing potentially challenging subjects and issues, finding resources that are both scientifically grounded and accessible can be challenging.

Therefore, how can we bridge the gap between complex academic information and the public domain? This consideration is especially significant for higher education institutions whose academics are often engaged in cutting-edge research. Indeed, higher education aims to be a force for positive impact on a national and international scale, and increased consideration should be given for how we can distil key findings and information into a directly applicable and accessible format. 

Research-informed storybooks: A promising bridge between academia and everyday life

This is where research-informed storybooks step in as a promising bridge between academia and everyday life. By blending credible insights from a range of disciplines with engaging narratives, these age-appropriate books provide children with stories that help them learn, understand issues, and express their emotions and perspectives through normalising conversations in a structured and nonjudgment-based context. 

While the approach represents a novel and impactful way for researchers to have direct engagement with the public domain, the development of storybooks can also bring together expertise and experience from relevant organisations, charities, and other stakeholders, adding to the credibility of the information embedded within the story, and further empowering care providers and educators. 

As academics at the University of Derby, we author an expanding series of research-informed children's books that utilise a development framework to address this very need as we endeavour to connect with our intended audience and share deconstructed academic information on a range of topics. We work with academics/external experts in a specific area, and devise a story based on key themes, undergoing an iterative development process. Once the focus, language and storyline have been evaluated, the images are then created. Children's illustrations are a key part of their reading comprehension, and are also subject to expert feedback, so they align with the story and accurately depict the intended message carefully and sensitively. 

So far, we've collaborated with academics and organisations to create storybooks tackling a range of important topics, including children's connection to nature, maths anxiety, eating disorders, coral reef conservation, promoting quality sleep, and bullying prevention. And there's so much more potential - future projects could address areas like helping children cope with grief and bereavement and promoting appreciation of the night sky and raising awareness of light pollution – there's some great academic work related to this taking place already at the University of Derby. 

Supporting children's development 

As we refine this approach, our books are evolving beyond storytelling to include activities and practical guidance for educators and care providers, making them even more useful as tools for supporting children's development. Once each storybook is completed, we incorporate it into intervention-based research to test how well it works and to ensure that it meets the needs of real-world public services. This process helps us bridge the gap between academic research and real-life impact, creating evidence-based resources that address pressing social issues.

The storybook project isn't just about creating resources, it's also an opportunity for university students to gain hands-on experience and build their skills. By getting involved in developing the books and related materials, students can boost their academic abilities while picking up valuable transferable skills that they can showcase to prospective employers, which can enhance graduate outcomes. This experience is particularly useful for students in fields like psychology, education (including teacher training), arts and design, creative writing and publishing, and media studies. Whether it's conducting literature reviews, crafting storylines, designing visuals, or contributing to intervention research, students get the chance to apply what they've learned in a real-world context.

Some of our specific storybook examples include a maths anxiety-focused story to promote emotion regulation and normalise maths talk. We have utilised this in a research project, and after children had read through the storybook with a maths specialist, we found that children spoke more freely about their maths feelings in a non-judgment based environment, which led to more positive perspectives of maths, particularly for children that had initially self-reported higher maths anxiety. 

Further to this, a collaborative project with an eating disorder charity led to the storyline and image development for a targeted storybook to support care providers and teachers in approaching the increasingly prevalent issue of disordered eating/eating disorders in children. Our research that explored care provider and teacher insight about the book revealed concern surrounding this issue, and a desire for suitable and credible (research-informed) resources to support and guide conversations. 

Exploring the digital option

Alongside printed books, we're also exploring ways to bring the project to life digitally, like creating dramatic reading videos to reach wider audiences and make academic publishing more modern and accessible. Recently, we tested this idea by recording a reading of our nature-connection storybook, which can be used as a classroom resource. Going digital isn't just cost-effective, it also opens opportunities to translate the storybooks into other languages, making them more engaging for multilingual learners and those new to English. 

This project, as a central initiative within the University of Derby, serves as a vital resource, uniting a wide range of expertise and providing students with opportunities to contribute to the creation of clear, accessible resources that support children's mental health and wellbeing. 

While academic peer review is essential for maintaining rigour and credibility within research, the true impact of these findings is in their ability to reach beyond academia. By translating complex, evidence-based insights into engaging, research-informed storybooks, this initiative bridges the gap between scientific knowledge and practical, real-world applications, empowering families and educators to address topics and issues that children encounter with confidence and clarity.

For anyone interested in learning more about our storybook development framework or to discuss potential collaboration, please do get in touch using the contact information provided. 

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