By Sheila Welch
September is here and school is back in session. What better time to check out some school stories?
I AM TOO ABSOLUTELY SMALL FOR SCHOOL by Lauren Child is a story for any child who’s feeling a bit too little to go off to that big place called school. The tone is light and the illustrations are quirky and very imaginative. The book is large enough to share with a group of children in a classroom, home, or library setting. Hearing this one will be fun for both preschoolers and school-age children who will enjoy remembering their own misgivings and excuses for not wanting to go to school.
It’s the first day of school, and a young boy is wondering who his teacher will be. He learns that he’s been assigned to Mrs. Green, and he’s heard rumors about her. His imagination conjures up a truly scary teacher in THE TEACHER FROM THE BLACK LAGOON written by Mike Thaler and illustrated by Jared Lee. This book is not for the faint-hearted! Mrs. Green is a green monster, and she breathes fire, eats half a boy, uses a giggling boy’s head for a globe, and turns another into a frog. Fortunately, the monster is just a dream, and the real Mrs. Green is definitely not monster material. Although this is a picture book, it would be appreciated by second through fifth graders who aren’t worried about scary pictures or pretend monsters. This would make a great Halloween book!
THE BERENSTAIN BEARS’ TROUBLE AT SCHOOL by Stan and Jan Berenstain is similar to many of the other books in this series that are intended to teach children important lessons. In this case, Brother Bear gets spoiled while home sick. After he has recovered, he returns to school unprepared. Among the lessons he learns are that procrastination, playing hooky, and being jealous are not the way to a happy life. Although these stories can seem annoyingly preachy to adult readers, children from first through third grade usually love them.
Louis Sachar won the coveted Newbery Award for HOLES, and he’s also well known for his series about a peculiar school with one room on top of another all the way to the 30th floor. It’s hard to imagine that this school filled with nonsense could get any stranger, but it does. Many third through sixth graders will love WAYSIDE SCHOOL GETS A LITTLE STRANGER, about this totally unconventional school and the weird teachers, staff, and students.
About Sheila
Sheila Kelly Welch is a mother, grandmother and retired teacher. She counts among her children’s fiction books LITTLE PRINCE KNOW-IT-ALL and A HORSE FOR ALL SEASONS. Sheila's novel, WAITING TO FORGET, has been selected by Bank Street College and Pennsylvania School Library Association for their lists of best-books-of-the-year. Her most recent stories, MESS-UP MOLLY and BIG CAT AND KITTEN, are published on-line by MeeGenius.
