Starting school!

By Susan Townley

As I’m writing this article, summer has only just begun and the excitement of the TD Summer Reading Club is building at the library. Summer is such a busy season at the library! All the children are out of school and everyone is excited about reading the books they haven’t had a chance to read while homework and other activities have been filling their days. Only too soon we’ll be seeing the back-to-school advertisements. Soon parents will be visiting the library to look for books to prepare their new kindergarteners for school. With that in mind, here are some new 2019 picture books to introduce the fun world of kindergarten.

The Best Seat in Kindergarten is a new early reader from Katharine Kenah that introduces readers to the very first experiences of the first day of school. Sam is a brand new kindergartener and is not sure where to sit and what to do. His teacher knows that everyone is feeling a little unsure and wisely takes the class on a walk to let them explore outside the school and collect special items they find around the yard. Sam quickly finds his place in the class by helping all his new classmates find treasures. Sam doesn’t collect any leaves or bugs of his own, but he does make so many friends! With a simple text, this book is an excellent early reader and a good book to introduce the idea of making friends in a new class.

Everyone worries about trying something new and so does Levi, the main character in Big Boys Cry, written and illustrated by Jonty Howley. Levi is starting at a new school and he is worried. He expresses his anxiety to his father who, not knowing what to say, tells him that big boys don’t cry. This of course is not the answer Levi is looking for and quickly realizes that big boys do indeed cry. On his walk to school he encounters fishermen, musicians, poets, parents, grandparents, so many men all expressing their emotions. In fact, “big boys were crying everywhere!” In the end Levi’s day wasn’t so scary and he returns home to find his papa in tears. He asks his father why he is crying and his father replies that it was Levi’s first day of school and he had been worried. Levi has the right answer to allay his father’s fears. “Papa, big boys do cry,” to which his father responds, “And that’s okay.” It’s a lovely book to discuss emotions, for both children and adults. It has especially clever end pages, opening with tissue boxes filled with tissues and ending with empty tissue boxes.

The School Book is a brand new picture book from children’s author extraordinaire Todd Parr. Parr is known for his brightly coloured, black-outlined illustrations and feel-good messages that speak to children’s feelings and possible anxieties. Parr continues his message of being kind and thinking of others while letting us know about all the wonderful things that happen at school. This book is sure to be as popular as his other bestselling picture books.

There is a new Lola book from the popular author-illustrator duo of Anna McQuinn and Rosalind Beardshaw. Lola, the book-loving preschooler of Lola at the Library fame grows up and heads to school in Lola Goes to School. Like most kindergarteners, Lola has visited school already to know what to expect but there are still so many new things to learn. Lola finds that school has some of her favourite familiar activities, such as reading and singing songs and some new activities as well. Most of all Lola learns that “school is fun…but exhausting.”

Butterflies on the First Day of School, written by Annie Silvestro, tackles the anxiety that children can feel about starting school. Using the familiar metaphor of “butterflies in your tummy” Silvestro introduces us to Rosie, a young girl who has diligently prepared for school by getting her first backpack and practising putting up her hand. Her confidence vanishes on her first day and she suddenly doesn’t feel well. She is puzzled when her mother tells her she just has butterflies in her stomach but begins to understand when she starts talking to new friends and butterflies that only she can see begin to flutter from her mouth. As her day goes on she begins to lose her butterflies. By recess she has enough confidence to reach out to a lost-looking classmate standing alone and whose own butterflies escape as they talk and become friends. This charming picture book has lively, cheerful illustrations by Dream Chen.

School is just beginning but come spring many kindergartens in this neighbourhood will be celebrating the new season with butterfly cocoons hatching in their classrooms. Butterflies in Room 6 by Caroline Arnold is a new non-fiction book filled with amazing photographs of one kindergarten class’s experience with butterfly hatching. The photos and text follow the painted lady butterflies from tiny blue eggs to adult insects, documenting the steps required to care for the creatures as they grow. The children in this class clearly loved this experience and if your child’s class has a butterfly hatching, they are sure to enjoy this fun kindergarten experience as well.

These books and so many more are available at the Ottawa Public Library. Here’s wishing you a wonderful new school year filled with new experiences and lots of books!

Susan Townley is children’s programs and public service assistant at the Sunnyside Branch of the Ottawa Public Library.