Imparting the "Social Awareness" skills, which included in Social Emotional Learning (SEL) model, contributes to increasing awareness of social diversity, and to develop an attitude of understanding and empathy towards "others". These skills are of particular importance in multicultural societies, as imparting these skills makes it possible to create a positive social interaction between individuals and different cultural groups. In addition, imparting these skills is of particular importance in early childhood, since at this age the "target audience" has not yet accumulated a stereotypical charge, nor has developed a negative attitude toward "others", compared to adulthood.

The study I am going to present examined how "Social Awareness" skills are reflected in children's literature, which is perceived as an important channel of socialization at this age. The study focused on Israeli children's literature while making an intercultural comparison between Arabic and Hebrew children's literature, in an attempt to describe the relationship between the Jewish majority group and the Arab-Palestinian native minority group.

Content analysis and semiology analysis were performed for fifty children's books included in two government educational programs: "Sifriyat Pijama" for Jewish schools, and "Maktabat Fanous" for Arab schools.

The findings of the study show that in both programs, there was an attempt to impart the "Social Awareness" skills and the values of multicultural education, but this attempt is not satisfactory, as the exposure to the "other" culture of the Arab or Jewish in these books was limited. The Arab "other" was revealed in the Hebrew program with stereotypical characteristics, which preserve the existing social order in which the relationship between the two groups, the Arab and the Jewish, is a relationship of mutual negation. While the Jewish "other" is not presented at all in the Arab program, this indicates that this program chooses to address the issue of social diversity by internal seclusion instead of discourse and openness.

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