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This study takes a teacher inquiry approach to examine the potential for multicultural literature to expand adolescent learners’ worldviews and shape their perceptions as global citizens. Being both a language arts teacher and researcher granted me an insider’s lens as I framed the research in a single case study of my eighth-grade students’ experiences within our ESL class. I drew on Sims Bishop’s (1990) metaphors of mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors to conceptualize a multilayered theoretical framework. While critical pedagogy and critical literacy remained central to the framework, theoretical tenets such as feminist pedagogies and socioconstructivist theories also guided this classroom research. Data gathering methods included a teacher journal, reflective questionnaires, and student portfolios. Key pedagogical practices contributing to the data included read alouds, dialogue journals, and multimodal creations through which students responded by expressing their thoughts and emotions in the face of injustices they encountered. A constant comparative method of data analysis (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) led to multiple findings. A focus on the classroom as a whole revealed emerging themes of empathy, insight, and agency through a first lens. A second lens focused on my perspective as a teacher and unveiled the salient themes of pedagogical practices to teach about the world, the emergence of allyship, and teaching during a pandemic. Three participant portraits offered a third lens featuring a journey of learning through three distinct capabilities: passion, curiosity, and wisdom. Findings revealed how interacting with multicultural books and connecting with real-world persons and events provided moments for adolescent learners to further develop critical consciousness and social awareness, and occasions to cultivate humanity, by building on empathy and compassion as they become global citizens.