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School Stories to Ease Your Kids’ Anxiety on the Big Day   

      The school year is starting throughout the United Stats, and little kids are making the transition to new classrooms, new schools, new teachers and new friends. I especially remember my children’s transition to kindergarten — being in a big school with so many big kids. I’d love to share some books that talk about being a new kid in school. They help kids envision what school’s like so that the routines are familiar.

     The Apple Doll, by Elissa Kleven (Farrar Straus Giroux, ages 4–7, $16.99, 40 pp.) This sweet story by local East Bay author/illustrator Elissa Kleven speaks to young children making the transition to a new school. Lizzy loves her apple tree; she finds comfort in its branches, daydreaming and playing throughout the seasons. But now that it’s fall, she’s very worried about her first day at school. For comfort, she makes a doll, Susanna, out of an apple from her tree. She brings Susanna to school, but other kids tease her about her apple doll. One day, as Lizzy watches her family prepare applesauce and dried apples, she has an idea: could they dry Susanna? And so Lizzy learns how to make a granny-apple doll and ends up showing her whole class how to make apple dolls. This is a lovely, loving book that really speaks to young children starting a new class, celebrating children’s imagination and resilience.

     Sea Monster’s First Day, by Kate Messner, illustrated by Andy Rash (Chronicle; ages 4–7; $16.99; 36 pp.) Even big guys can have a rough time starting school, as Ernest the sea monster shows us. Starting school and learning how everything works is a tough job: There’s so much to learn and do, and something always seems to go wrong. “It felt like everybody was already part of a group,” Ernest says.
But Ernest has a positive attitude and keeps trying to make friends: “Finally, at lunch, I spotted some fish that looked a little like me. I decided it was worth a try. We hit it off right away.”
Kids will love the bright, goofy illustrations of Ernest and the other fish, with their big goggly eyes and funny expressions. Author Kate Messner achieves a balance between acknowledging that the first day of school isn’t easy and sharing the message that a positive attitude goes a long way. She accomplishes this through gentle humor in this upbeat story about making friends.

     Keisha Ann Can! by Daniel Kirk (Putnam, ages 3–6, $15.99, 32 pp.) “Who can catch the school bus for the early-morning ride?/ Who can wait in line until it’s time to go inside?/ ... KEISHA ANN CAN!”
Keisha Ann is a young African-American girl who just radiates happiness and positive attitude. As she bounces through her day at school, she shows readers what she can do at school. The bright, cheerful pictures, the rhyme and rhythm, and especially the message that we can do these things make this book perfect for preschoolers or kindergartners. This is a great book to read at this time of year. It talks to your children about what they do at school. Do they take a bus or ride in a car? Do they wait in line to go inside? I love this positive, upbeat book for the beginning of the school year.

     Kindergarten Diary, by Antoinette Portis (HarperCollins, ages 4–6, $12.99, 32 pp.) “I don’t want to go to Big School with big kids. What if they’re mean?” worries Annalina on the day before she starts kindergarten. But her mom insists that she really has to go to school, and here we have her diary of her first month in kindergarten.
I loved how this story really helped get inside the feelings of the child, showing what’s scary and fun about school. The illustrations are lively and fun. Annalina has a wonderful imagination. When she worries that her teacher will be scary, she imagines a fierce monster teacher spewing out the alphabet. When she and her friends try to get across the monkey bars, they pretend they’re in the jungle and then in outer space. Annalina’s diary finishes on the last day of September — there are just too many fun things to do to keep writing! Annalina’s voice is fresh and authentic.

     The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School, by Laura Murray, illustrated by Mike Lowery (Putnam, ages 4-7, $16.99, 32 pp.) This fun story will be perfect for reading aloud at the beginning of the year, with its bouncy rhythm and rhyme and great humor.  A classroom bakes a gingerbread man, but the children all go outside to recess and leave him to cool off in the classroom. And so begins a familiar chase, but this time the gingerbread man is chasing the class, instead of the familiar animals chasing him. “I’m the gingerbread man, and I’m trying to find / the children who made me, but left me behind!”
     Laura Murray combines good-natured humor with lively, dynamic rhythm and rhyme in this story that begs to be read aloud. The gingerbread man’s adventures take him on a tour of the school: to the gym, the art room, the principal’s office. In each place, he meets the teacher who helps him follow his class. This story lends itself perfectly to kindergarten classes just getting to know their new school, or preschoolers looking ahead to a larger school. In fact, Murray has a great collection of related activities on her website. At its heart, though, this book will be a favorite because of the great read-aloud quality to the language that Murray has used.

     Mary Ann Scheuer is a librarian, teacher and mom of three children. She is the librarian at Emerson Elementary School in Berkeley. She is passionate about helping children and families find books that make them excited about reading. Find more great ideas for reading on her blog, Great Kid Books, http://greatkidbooks.blogspot.com.
 

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