New School Year: Books for Kids
Get ready for a new school year with these wonderful children’s books! They cover topics that often arise during back to school, such as helping teachers pronounce your name correctly, missing your parents, dealing with issues with friends, self-regulation, and digging deep to appreciate what an opportunity going to school is. How are your kids adjusting to the new school year so far?
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. I received complimentary copies of some of the books below for review purposes; however, all opinions are my own.
Books for a New School Year
Enjoy these back to school books for a new school year!
This empowering picture book would be wonderful to read before a child starts the school year or to share in the classroom at the beginning of the year. The main character models how children can gently but confidently correct people who mispronounce their names or who, worst of all, can’t be bothered to try. The book explains the names are unique and shouldn’t be changed just to make it easier for others. Often names carry meaning and a connection to one’s culture and family. Based on the author’s own experiences as a child (and how she wished she’d responded) this is a book that should be required reading in schools. Be sure to watch my interview with the author – who is not only a friend but an active member of my book club, a fellow Board member of Multicultural Kid Blogs and a cohost of Read Your World Day.
Buy My Name Is Ai Lin on Amazon or Bookshop
Every new person needs an enthusiastic Tour Guide to show them around the school – and that could be you! This colorful, funny book is a crash course in how to introduce a New Person to their new school. It includes essential tips like doing a periodic head count (even if there is only one New Person on the tour) and always sounding very EXCITED! Yet perhaps the most important part of the tour comes at the end, when there is the possibility that the New Person and the Tour Guide might trade their titles for a new one: Friends. A fun book that helps children have empathy for new students and demonstrates how to make them feel welcome.
Buy The Tour at School on Amazon or Bookshop
This inspiring book is based on the real story of a school in rural South Korea that discovered an ingenious way to solve a problem plaguing schools throughout the South Korean countryside. As job opportunities have shifted to the cities, many young families have left, leaving fewer children and causing many schools to close. In this story, a young girl finds a way to save her school – and help her beloved grandmother at the same time! As many women of that generation were unable to attend school when they were girls, they now had a chance to attain the education they had dreamed of. A charming book that shows the power of creative solutions and the strength of intergenerational bonds.
Buy Sarang Saves the School on Amazon or Bookshop
This gentle book, available in English and Spanish, is perfect for children starting school for the first time, or for any child experiencing separation anxiety. A young boy worries about starting day school while his mother works. What will he do when he misses her? His mother teaches him a special signal, which takes advantage of their special heart connection, always there no matter the distance. A useful books for families to use as they help their children adjust to a new school year.
Buy What Will I Do if I Miss You? on Amazon or Bookshop
Buy Y si te extraño… ¿qué hago? on Amazon or Bookshop
Fans of the Proper Badger Would Never! series will be thrilled to see this latest installment, as Proper Badger tries to be a model student (since he hears that the gold stars good students receive are delicious). Yet unfortunate things seem to happen all around him, although he definitely did not have anything to do with them. Proper Badger is very proper, so obviously he would never eat the class pet or accidentally glue a whistle to his snout. To his great surprise (since he absolutely did not do any of those things), some of the children don’t think badgers belong in the classroom. But that can’t be right, can it? A laugh out loud read that little ones will love, as they see learn about all the disastrous things that Proper Badger most certainly did not do at school!
Buy Proper Badger Would Never Trash the Classroom! on Amazon or Bookshop
I reviewed the original English version of this lovely, inclusive book earlier, so I’m thrilled to see that it has now been translated into Spanish. It is the perfect book to read at the beginning of the school year, letting all children know that they are welcome and valued. It is a portrait of a supportive community of adults (including teachers, librarians, staff, and more) there to nurture and celebrate our youngest learners, showing them that school is a place where everyone belongs. The diverse illustrations perfectly complement the inclusive text. The cover even folds out into a poster that you can hang in your classroom or home. A great way to set the stage for the new school year.
Buy Esta Es Una Escuela on Amazon or Bookshop
Buy This Is a School on Amazon or Bookshop
Fall is for fresh starts but also the return of traditions, like entering a new classroom and still getting to sit with your best friend. Ravi is all for new beginnings, as long as things don’t change too much. But there is one new beginning that Ravi isn’t so sure of – the new girl Ellie, who thinks she is best friends with Ravi and Joe, even though neither invited her. While Joe doesn’t mind the addition, Ravi liked things the way they were. Why does Ellie have to get in the middle of everything? Then his big sister helps him understand that even though change can be hard at first, what follows is something even better than what it was before. The second in a series about the seasons, which includes Summer Is for Cousins, this is a lovely book for a new school year, as children adjust to changes and learn to welcome new people into their world. [see my interview with the author]
Buy Fall Is for Beginnings on Amazon or Bookshop
Libraries have always been an integral part of my life, and thankfully the same is true for my children, to the extent we often don’t appreciate it for the privilege that it is. In 1930s Virginia, it was a privilege that did not extend to Black citizens. This book honors Samuel Wilbert Tucker, an unsung hero of the Civil Rights movement, who fought for the right to read decades before Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. made their historic achievements. Tucker organized a sit-in at the local library then used it as a springboard to argue the issue in court and start a long process that would take decades to culminate in true integration of the local library. A wonderful tribute to a story that needs to be more well known, helping children appreciate the right to read that they enjoy.
Buy Fight for the Right to Read: Samuel Wilbert Tucker and the 1939 Sit-Down Strike for Library Reading Equality on Amazon or Bookshop
This fun early chapter book / graphic novel addresses a common problem – one that just came up for my daughter and her besties this year: What do you do when your closest friends aren’t in your class at the beginning of the new school year? Mabel is not happy that her buddies are in a different class. And since she moved, her friends aren’t even in the same neighborhood anymore! So is it any surprise that she makes up an imaginary friend? At least, she thinks the elephant who starts following her around is imaginary. But if so, why didn’t she make up something more exciting, like a two-headed shark? Mabel and her new (possibly imaginary) friend (who is definitely an elephant) tackle these questions and more in this hilarious book that will have even reluctant readers giggling along and begging for just one more chapter.
Buy Mabel Makes (Up) a Friend on Amazon or Bookshop
Related Posts:
Back to School for Homeschoolers
Creating a Morning Routine that Works for Everyone
