Fun New Books

I love finding new books to add to my collection! I just bought 2 new books last week and tried them out on my summer school class-they were a hit!

 Kindergators is a new series by one of my favorite authors, Rosemary Wells. My students have always loved her Max & Ruby books so I knew I had to give the Kindergators a try. The first book in this new series is called Hands Off, Harry! and it's about a little alligator named Harry who has a hard time keeping his hands to himself. Luckily his classmates have some class meetings to help Harry learn about respecting personal space. This is a great book for introducing classroom rules and talking about behavior. I will definitely be putting this book on my list for the first week of school! It was a bit of a long read aloud, but it has darling pictures and my summer school kiddos were completely engaged! They kept shouting out helpful suggestions for Harry about how he should behave :) Now if I could only find a cute alligator puppet, then I'd have a little mascot to remind my kinders about good behavior all year long!

 The other new book I got is Pete the Cat. Thanks to Fran at Kindergarten Crayons for suggesting this one (and for making an awesome math mat to go along with it). This book is about a cat name Pete that gets a new pair of white shoes. He loves his new shoes so much he starts to sing a little song about them. As Pete walks along he steps in different things, like blueberries that turn his shoes blue, but he never cries or gets upset, he just keeps walking along singing his song (what a great message!).  Even though I've only had the book for a week it's already becoming one of my favorite children's books ever. My only regret is that I didn't purchase 2 copies of it because my students are begging to read it on their own, so my new copy is already looking well loved (the text is very predictable so I think my entire summer school class already has it memorized!). The best part of this book is the fun song that goes with it. You can download the song here. Warning-if you get this book be prepared to read it EVERY day because your students will beg for it. Also, it looks like there is a new Pete book due out at the end of July: Pete the Cat: Rocking in My School Shoes which I will surely be buying!

Do you have any fun book recommendations? I'm always on the look out for great new books to read to my class-so leave a comment if you have any suggestions!