I know July 1 is a little premature for this post, but I like to have a good book to read aloud for the first week of school. The hunt has begun.

The First Week of School by Drew Beckmeyer (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 48 pages, grades K-3). Get ready for an extra exciting first week of school, looking at what happens in a classroom each day of that week. At first things seem pretty ordinary: students include a talented artist who lacks self-confidence, an inventor who brings a creation to share on the first day, and the sports kings who like to be either playing or discussing sports. There’s also a teacher and a bearded dragon named Pat, who’s the class pet. Things start to get weird when the inventor’s satellite makes extraterrestrial contact, and a creature named Nobody shows up. Everyone thinks Nobody is the new kid who was expected to start a few days late, so they don’t pay much attention to him, allowing him to bond with (a somewhat reluctant) Pat and to find a way to showcase the shy artist’s talents. Nobody’s last act before heading back home is to get some plutonium for the inventor’s time machine, which seems to work, since the last page is the same as the first, showing the kids arriving for the first day of school.

This book is cute and a lot of fun, with the alien providing an unexpected twist to ordinary events like recess, lunch, and STEM class. The illustrations look like they could have been created by the student artist with her crayons or colored pencils and move between close-ups of different parts of the classroom and aerial views. Would I use it as a read-aloud? I’m not sure. The text is mostly lots of small captions about what’s going on in different parts of the pictures, and it may be hard for younger kids to follow. I would want to project the pages to allow them to see everything that’s going on.

The Yellow Bus by Loren Long (Roaring Brook Press, 48 pages, ages 4-9). A school bus has a busy and happy life transporting kids to and from school. Time passes, and the bus gets a new job: carrying senior citizens around town. When the bus no longer runs, it seems like it’s been abandoned, until unhoused people come and find a place to rest inside the bus. Later, it’s towed to a farm, where goats climb all over it. Finally, the bus is washed away by the river, and comes to rest under the water, where fish, frogs, and turtles find a home. With each group shown, the repeating line, “And they filled her with joy,” makes this a celebration of all the eras in the bus’s life. A two page note at the end tells how Loren Long got the idea from a real-life abandoned school bus and gives a fascinating look at how he created the art using models that he built.

This book is really a masterpiece, and one that I hope will be considered for a Caldecott. The bus and her inhabitants are brightly colored against a black and white background. I’m so glad Loren Long included information on how he created the art, which made me even more appreciative of the work that went into this. Having said all that, I don’t think I will be using this for my back-to-school classes. It’s more of a meditation on life, and I found it a bit too melancholy for the first day of school.