This study examined the mediating effect of emotional labor in the relations between teachers’ emotional intelligence and teacher-child interaction of novice early childhood teachers. The sample consisted of 248 novice early childhood teachers in Gyeonggi Province. The structural equation modeling was conducted using AMOS to test the fit of a hypothesized structural model. The mediating effect of emotional labor was verified by the bootstrapping approach. The results were as follows: First, teacher-child interaction was positively associated with teachers’ emotional intelligence and deep acting in emotional labor was negatively associated with surface acting in emotional labor. Next, surface acting in emotional labor had a mediating effect on the relations between emotional intelligence and teacher-child interaction. Finally, deep acting of emotional labor had a partial mediating effect on the relationship between emotional intelligence and teacher-child interaction. Based on these findings, ways to enhance teachers’ emotional intelligence in relation to the novice teachers’ emotional characteristics, and to improve recognition on emotional labor were discussed.