Early childhood is a critical period for the development of socio-emotional competence, including emotion understanding, regulation, empathy, and prosocial behavior. These early abilities form essential foundations for children’s well-being, peer relationships, school adjustment, and later mental health. Drawing on bioecological and emotion socialization frameworks, this book highlights the central role of adults in shaping children’s socio-emotional development through modeling, emotional responsiveness, and direct teaching. In this context, Shared Book Reading (SBR) emerges as a particularly powerful pathway for socio-emotional learning. Beyond its well-established contributions to language and literacy, SBR provides rich opportunities for emotional dialogue, perspective-taking, and mental-state discourse. Through guided conversations about stories, adults support children’s understanding of emotions, intentions, and social situations in a calm, supportive setting. Bringing together recent empirical and intervention-based research, this volume examines adult–child discourse during SBR, home-based interventions, and programs implemented in educational settings. Together, the chapters illuminate the mechanisms through which shared reading promotes socio-emotional development across diverse cultural and developmental contexts, while also pointing to promising directions for future research.