This paper will examine the adolescent reception of high school reading materials in the context of developing and understanding empathy. The first part will highlight the importance of reading in the form of adolescents and the issues they face today due to ubiquitous distractions. The importance of reading and its function within the education system will be pointed out below. It will be shown why it is important to modify the processing of reading works in the Croatian language class, i.e. what are all the advantages that students can gain by reading reading works. Next, the importance and role of emotions and emotional intelligence in everyday life, but also in the lives of adolescents, will be mentioned. In the context of emotions, the greatest emphasis will be placed on empathy and why it is important. Given that we live in an accelerated world, empathy has thus become a very marginal emotion that actually only needs to be remembered. Therefore, all its characteristics and benefits that are crucial for the future of civilization will be highlighted. Later, possible ways of implementing empathy in a reading class and encouraging it in adolescents will be pointed out. It is also important to point out the period of adolescence itself as a time of great psychophysical changes and the importance of using this period to encourage empathy precisely with the quality literary content offered by the educational system. Finally, on the example of three reading works: The Catcher in the Rye, The Metamorphosis and The Rainbow, we will see which methods could be used to encourage empathy in the context of the education system.