This School Year Will Be The Best!
By Kay Winters Illustrated by Renee Andriani
School has been the topic of conversation around my house for weeks. My daughter went back at the end of August and my son had his official first day yesterday. With a kindergartener and a preschooler, we have been prepping for school for a while. One thing that my kids have responded well to is reading books about going back to school. To learn what it will be like and some of the feelings they might have about it. I was in the bookstore the other day and I purchased This School Year Will be the Best! By Kay Winters and Illustrated by Renee Andriani.
The book is about a little girl on the first day of school. At circle time, her teacher asks each student what they “hope will happen this year?” The book then dedicates a page or two of drawing and a sentence to a hope each student in the class has. One kid hopes to win the science fair and another hopes to make new friends. Another kid hopes to be tall and one hopes to bring his snake to school.
The illustrations are pen and ink and they remind me of picture books from when I was a kid. It felt nostalgic reading this book to my kids. But what I really liked about this book was that it opened up a conversation about what my kids hope will happen this year. I also loved that it shows that all kids are different. The book helps to reinforce what I am trying to teach my kids. They might be sad or scared or want a chocolate fountain to pour from the bubbler (water fountain if you are not from the area) and their friends might not feel the same way. But both their feelings and the feelings of other people are ok even if they are not the same. This is a great little book to read at the beginning of the school year.
