Best Back to School Books

Its back to school season!

One of my favorite things to do as an educator is to find a book that matches a theme or a moment. There are so many excellent picture books out there that speak to many different feelings, emotions and situations.

I did inherit a small library with my classroom, but to be honest, I haven’t even had much of a chance to look through the books and get that organized! I do know, however, that I will continue to use our local public library to check out books that meet various situations in my classroom! An excellent perk of our library as a teacher is that I can get a teacher card and check out exponentially more books than before!

I searched around and collected a bunch of books for the first few weeks of school. I choose books that focus on the new classroom routine, being nervous or feeling unsure in a group of people, and kindness. I will leave reviews for some of the books, but mostly I’ll just share the pictures 🙂

Clark the Shark is a fantastic book about a very enthusiastic shark who is just a little bit too much. He is SO excited to play games and eat lunch and answer questions that he kinda tramples on other students in the process. This is a great book for kids who may feel like “too much” as it does a great job of affirming the benefits of that personality type while also encouraging those personality types in ways that don’t trample on other people.

How Do Dinosaurs Go to School? This is a fun series that uses dinosaurs and rhyming to talk about acceptable and unacceptable forms of behavior in certain situations. This one addresses how dinosaurs should and shouldn’t behave at school and prompts the students to think about their own behavior in the process.

Lena’s Shoes are Nervous is a book about feeling nervous. But, OF COURSE, Lena isn’t nervous! It’s just her shoes that are nervous! This is a great way to talk about feeling nervous!

Library Lion is one of my favorite books of the summer. A lion starts to work at a library. The head librarian is VERY strict with the rules and insists that they must never be broken. One day the lion breaks a rule in order to help a librarian. The lion gets kicked out the library for breaking the rule but is eventually reconsidered since he broke the rule out of kindness. I really like how this is a great way to discuss the spirit of the law vs. the letter of the law. I do want my students to follow the rules and procedures of the classroom, but I also want them to think a bit deeper and know WHY we do what we do.

How Rocket Learned to Read is a great back to school book because it talks all about how Rocket was a hesitant reader at first, but when he decided to try, he was able to learn how to read. He then became eager to learn!