All Welcome Here

May 15, 2020
Grades K-2 Lively haiku pairs with vibrant art to showcase various facets of the first day of school. Beginning with New Stuff and a packed backpack ( All the bright new things / Smell like sunrise, like glitter? / I am dressed, let's go! ), scenarios throughout a brightly decorated building and titled poems portray students' assorted activities and experiences. A classroom includes Name Tags ( at every desk . . . a place just for you ), standing for the Pledge," and the class hamster. Students visit the library ( the school's heartbeat ) and the lunchroom, with playful, lighthearted moments (pretending to be pirates at recess) interspersed among a supportive recognition of potential kid fears, such as getting lost or meeting new people. Ultimately, the day concludes with a cheerful May we come back tomorrow? Cartoonlike, expressive mixed-media illustrations are an eye-catching blend of bright colors, patterns, and perspectives; the multicultural kids and adults further the sense of inclusiveness. With its reassuring and upbeat elements, this may also help alleviate first-day fears as it highlights the many positive opportunities that await.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

June 1, 2020
An energetic series of haiku celebrates the first day of school. Some describe individuals: "Angelica" is "Like a red rocket / Flashing across a blue sky: / Her hair in the wind" as she runs to catch the bus. Some orient readers to their classrooms: "Name Tags" are "At every desk, / A chair with tennis-ball feet, / A place just for you." Some capture the experience: In crowded "Hallways," younger children watch as "A thick herd of cows / Tramples past, smelly and loud. / Fifth graders are tall." The individual poems' success as haiku vary. Some, like "Hallways" and "Growing Up," in which a mother bids goodbye to a fledgling kindergartner as a "small / Bird flies from its nest," nail the form; others are more patterned, short narratives than anything else. Oddly, for a book that purports welcome, a mean-spirited streak surfaces. Student "Harold" is described thus: "Like a duck, one boy / Waddles down the hall, quacking. / Yikes, he's in my class!" Another poem celebrates a "Prank," in which an older child who knows the ways of a particular water fountain "smirks" while turning the knob to splash the face of the unsuspecting younger child. The kid laughs instead of crying, but it feels gratuitous. GrandPr�'s busy, colorful paintings use primary colors to render this racially diverse school's cheerfully chaotic first day. Title notwithstanding, not the most welcoming of books. (Picture book. 4-7)

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June 15, 2020
The creator of the Jigsaw Jones series switches creative tacks with this sequence of haiku that propels classmates through a busy opening day of school, highlighting their activities, personalities, and emotions. In the spirit of the title, a new friend defuses a girl’s anxiety (“This morning she clung/ To her mother’s knees, so scared./ Now look—a kind face!”), and name tags show students where to sit (“At every desk,/ A chair with tennis-ball feet,/ A place just for you”). The tempo accelerates when it’s time to exercise (“We jiggle, wiggle,/ Jump and stretch”), and imaginations soar on the reading rug (“She wrestles with bears,/ Travels to faraway lands”). In mixed-media art featuring an array of vibrant colors, textures, and patterns, Caldecott Honoree Grandpré captures the day’s variable moods in pictures of absorbed, interacting kids of various skin tones and abilities. Though references to a backpack full of “new stuff!” and binary “girls and boys” perhaps welcome fewer than the title’s promised “all,” the book offers a cheery take on the joys of camaraderie. Ages 4–7.

July 1, 2020

PreS-Gr 1-Loosely linked haiku poems tell the story of a child's first day of school, starting with packing new school supplies in the morning all the way through arriving home later that day. The unnamed child at the start and end is light-skinned with a straight brown bob. However, the poems quickly introduce-and then just as briskly move on from-diverse characters and topics, from playground games to library time. The mixed media illustrations show children and teachers of various skin and hair colors and hair types; one child is shown using a wheelchair and one adult wears a hijab. It's refreshing to see the adult at the school library present as masculine while the school bus driver presents feminine. While the book's title references a pro-diversity, pro-immigrant, pro-LGBTQIA message, the interior alludes to this message only subtly; it's not clear that anyone in the book is LGBTQIA or an immigrant. Overall the tone is cheerful and reassuring. VERDICT A pleasant addition to first-day-of-school literature that focuses on the some of the upsides of school.-Sarah Stone, San Francisco P.L.

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