This is a School will be a staple in elementary school libraries

This is a School is a picture book that seemingly every school librarian and teacher was talking about during the start of the school year. Starting the process of going to school can be quite scary for those young students. Going to school can also be a very exciting time. Sometimes, when the emotions of ‘scared’ and ‘excited’ combine it creates a troublesome experience for educators and parents called chaos. This is a School is a gentle, go-to picture book that introduces elementary school for those ages who are young enough to envision it as a mysterious place of wonder.

After kindergarten, elementary school is simply seen as ‘school’ to those who go there. It probably has something to do with the numbers associated with the advancing grades. I remember being too young to attend school and my mother saying to me when she saw the school buses on the road, “here come the yellow monsters”! In hindsight, and as a parent, I wouldn’t have compared school buses to yellow monsters, but I’m assuming that it made me giggle or elicited some sort of favorable reaction.

So, once the big yellow monsters drop you off, assuming that you’re not gestated during the commute, school can begin in earnest. The readers to This is a School will quickly meet a kid. They’ll see the kid in class, the class in the hall, and the greater building that will shape their lives’ education. Then they’ll see all of the things that we do in a school from sharing, listening, asking, learning, playing, trying, always trying, and if it doesn’t work that time, then trying again or in a different manner.

The book stresses community. This is the ‘village’ type of community in that we’re all part of. In, This is a School, that effect works very well because it softly drives home the fact that all of the kids, regardless of their heritage or physical abilities, are on the same team. They’re all going to school for the same purpose, and that’s to learn the building blocks of the characteristics and traits that make us better students and people.

This is a School is presented with simple sentences or fragments that those early readers will be able to read and comprehend by themselves. However, by the time that they’ll be able to independently read all of the book, it’s going to be too simple for them. Remember that this book is best served by those young children going to school for the first time. It serves as a way to introduce the routines that they’ll experience in this wonderful new place. If you’re in second grade, and already know the fun things that will happen in your school day then This is a School will be too young for you.

However, for those younger people, this is the gentle, book-friend that will help them demystify that building down the street.

This is a School is by John Schu with illustrations by Veronica Miller Jamison and available on Candlewick Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

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