On the first day of school by P. Crumble and Dean Rankine

Scholastic, 2019. ISBN: 9781742999807.
(Age: 4+) Recommended. Themes: Music, Rhyming story, First day of school, Friendship, Families. With a CD (sung by Penny McNamee) in a slip cover inside the front cover, and rhyming lines taking up each page, what reader will not sing along as the story builds with the things a child will encounter at school. All told with a laugh out loud set of illustrations detailing what is going on in the text and more, children will love having this read aloud to them, or have the CD on to sing along with, or learn sections to be able to sing out loud themselves. The book and CD lend themselves to a variety of uses in the classroom for those first days at a school, where perhaps some children are a little nervous.
At the end of each refrain is the line, 'raise your hand if you have to do a wee' which will not only cause lots of laughs from the audience, but also underline the importance of telling someone if you do need to go to the toilet.
A plethora of activities await the new children: show and tell, playing with paints, eating lunch, singing out loud, story time and finally packing up to go home, while many rules within the classroom are given: no calling out, wear hats outside, listen for the bell and don't pick your nose. Each double page adds to the developing list of things done in school, and will allay those concerns that some new students may have.
Children will love learning the sequence of the activities, predicting what one will come next when they sing along with adults, just like in a Kim's Game where a number of things are learnt and recalled.
Fran Knight