It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey as a way to share what you have read and/or reviewed in the past week. It's also a terrific way to find out what other people are reading.
Jen Vincent, of Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee Moye of Unleashing Readers have given this meme a children's literature focus: picture books, middle grade novels, etc. They "encourage everyone who participates to support the blogging community by visiting the other bloggers that link up and leave comments for them.
The kids in the neighborhood where I live went back to school last week. As I walked through the neighborhood in the days leading up to the first day, you could see signs of growing excitement. I know from the wonderful pictures I've seen on Facebook, that so many of my friends and neighbors had a terrific start to the new school year. It seemed kind of odd to see the empty swimming pool in the park on my daily walk!
My friends in the school district where I taught will be starting back next week. And many more will be going back in the weeks to come. I hope everyone has a great start to the new school year. This week I've included a few books to share with kids that might be a little nervous about the first day. Here's what I've been reading this past week:
Middle Grade Fiction
Picture Books
This cute picture book lets young readers know that everything will be fine on the first day of school since friends are all around to be encouraging. Fang, while being a big, scary-looking shark, is quite nervous about starting school. He's worried about all of the things that could go wrong. Little kids will giggle as they see some of the mishaps that Fang experiences, but at the end of the day his friends let him know that everything is all right. This would be a good way to start a conversation about how friends can help each other on the first day of school, and for the rest of the school year.
Sam is a little nervous about his first day of kindergarten. But when he takes the opportunity to help others find interesting items to collect during a class nature walk, he realizes that he's going to love kindergarten because of all the new friends that he has made. This would be a great book to share with anyone who is starting kindergarten as a way to talk about how everyone is new to school and a little bit nervous about it. It also is a good way to have a conversation about ways that we can help our friends in our new classroom communities. This would be a good book to have in a classroom library, as the easy to read text and comforting illustrations will have kids coming back to it for independent reading.
This fun picture book helps young readers get over back-to-school anxiety with humorous illustrations and bouncy rhyming text that remind them that all of their favorite monsters go to school. Fans of monster movies and stories will recognize Bigfoot, Frankenstein, and the Loch Ness Monster and realize that all of them go to school and all of them are a little bit nervous about it. This could be a good book to share during the first days of school. It also might inspire young writers to imagine their favorite fictional characters going to school.
I really like the way this graphic novel/picture book reframes the monster under the bed to be a good friend instead of something scary. Tiger's monster is her good friend and each night she brings the monster some dinner, they play games, and the monster scares away all of Tiger's nightmares. But when a nightmare comes along that's too big for Tiger to handle alone, she and Monster learn that teamwork is best. This is definitely a good one for the bookshelf!