September may seem like the month that marks summer’s ending, but it is also a month of beginning — the traditional start of the school year, the beginning of fall. To mark these significant beginnings and the ending we have chosen a few books about fall and a couple about school.
Good-bye Summer Hello Autumn written and illustrated by Kenard Pak is a conversation between the narrator and the various objects (trees, foxes, bluejays, walking sticks, butterflies) and weather phenomenon they encounter. It is charming in the friendly openness of the dialogue.
Hello trees!
Hello! Now that the cool winds have come,
we love how our branches sway in the sun.
…
Hello, walking stick and butterflies.
Hello! We’re surprised you saw us. We try our best to
blend in. And we’ll do the same in warmer places.
The implication is that we are all in this great green world together and we are friends. The narrator meets furry and feathered creatures and then weather — thunder, chill in the air, as the book progresses from late summer to autumn. And finally the narrator says hello to leaves, who reply,
Hello. We are changing our colors. Some of us
turn red or brown, while others turn gold or yellow.
The dogwood leaves turn purple.
This lovely book ends as it began with the narrator heading outside in the morning. Instead of “Hello Late Summer Morning,” they say, “Hello autumn!”
Kenard Pak’s illustrations are just perfect for this story. The palette gradually goes from full-on green to muted green to those glorious autumn colors that we love. And his trees and foxes make us want to go for a walk in the woods. The streetscapes make us want to step into one of those cozy shops to browse a book or drink a cup of hot chocolate.
This would be a wonderful book to use as a model with students for a fun writing project. They could identify a few furry or feathered characters in their neighborhoods, a bit of weather. And soon they’d be off writing their own “Hellos” and “Good-byes.”
Full of Fall photographed and illustrated by one of our favorite authors, April Pulley Sayre, is a beautiful poem praising this special season.
The book begins: “September sun / is low in the sky. So long summer. / Green, goodbye!” As always, Sayre includes beautiful photographs, this time of fall trees and leaves.
The text is deceptively simple, but no doubt required much writing and re-writing to get these satisfying lines. “Trees are ready. / Twigs let go. / Leaves slip / and spin. / Wind sweeps. / Leaves blow.”
This book is a gift to those of us who live in an area with deciduous trees. It will help us to appreciate the glory of fall. And for those who may not see that many deciduous trees it will be a visit to a beautiful world.
The book ends with this satisfying transition: “Fall is ending. / Good-bye leaf show. / Winter is coming … / Oh, / hello, snow!”
We reviewed Yellow Time, written and illustrated by Lauren Stringer, in 2019, but we love this book so much we want to visit it again. Stringer wrote the poem that became this book when the ash trees that lined her street all turned gloriously yellow and a gust of wind transformed the view from her window into “a rain of leaves that covered everything and turned the world yellow.” In few words Stringer captures the changing season, from busy squirrels to migrating geese to the air which smells like “wet mud and dry grass with a sprinkle of sugar.”
Into this yellow world the children come out of their house to gather. “They run in the yellow air. They let it catch their hair and cover their sweaters. They jump and turn in yellow time.” The glowingly yellow art swirls and dances with them. When the joyous “symphony of yellow” has left branches bare, the children head home, gathering “bouquets of yellow … to press in thick books and remember … what a lovely yellow time it was.” And what a lovely book this is, its own symphony to the wonder and magic of fall and of yellow time.
In School’s First Day of School, written by Adam Rex, the newly built Frederick Douglas Elementary School likes having Janitor come to mop and buff the floors and wash the windows, getting ready for the first day of school. But School is a little worried when Janitor talks about the children that will come soon. And come they do, more than School could ever have imagined, opening and closing doors, drinking from the water fountains, playing on the jungle gym. When a small girl with freckles who doesn’t want to come to school and has to be carried in whispers, “I don’t like school,” School thinks I must be awful. And when she whispers it again during kindergarten circle time, School thinks Maybe it doesn’t like you either.
Gradually School begins to adjust to his role, to understand that a joke is funny, and to learn about rectangles. The little freckled girl, too, is adjusting. When she makes a picture of School the teacher asks to hang it up and whispers that she thinks it’s the best picture.
School thinks so, too. When the children leave at the end of the day School shares his adventure-filled day with Janitor, who comes to clean.
“Do you think we can invite everyone back tomorrow?” School asks. “Especially that little freckled girl.” Janitor promises to see what he can do.
Both School and the little freckled girl learn that while going to school (and being a School) might seem intimidating at first they can actually enjoy new experiences. Christian Robinson’s brightly cheery illustrations add to the fun of this unique point of view on starting school.
Light in the Darkness by Lesa Cline-Ransome, illustrated by James E. Ransome, is a story about a different sort of school, a secret school that takes place at night in a branch-covered pit in the woods where Morris, an enslaved person whose mistress taught him to read when he was young, covertly teaches other enslaved people to learn to read. It’s a perilous undertaking — an enslaved girl who learned letters was discovered and whipped, one lash for every letter she had learned while the other enslaved people were forced to watch.
Still, a mother and her daughter, Rosa, risk slipping off on nights when it’s safe to go to the secret school because, as Mama says, when they are free they will need to know how to read. “Y’all have to learn fast,” Morris tells them. “Sun’ll be on us before you know it.” And they do learn, using sticks to shape letters and scratching letters in the dirt, “taking in learning like it’s their last breath.”
Rosa and her Mama go every night that they can, being careful to avoid the patrollers who ride through the night looking for escapees or enslaved people away from the plantation. One night they hear hoofbeats. When the patrollers come close to the secret school pit, everyone is “quiet as cotton” until the patrollers ride on. Later, they learn that two men had been caught and whipped so bad one “near bled to death.” For many nights after, Rosa’s mother says it is too dangerous to go to school again, until finally Rosa insists they must go. When they arrive, Morris is the only one there, but soon others come, and Rosa helps one of the new girls begin to learn her letters. Ransome ends this story with courage and with hope — the courage of these folks coming back to the school in the ground at the risk of brutal beatings and the hope woven into the learning expanding in an ever-widening circle as Rosa shares what she knows.
Luminous illustrations capture the mostly nighttime scenes, and an author’s note explains how Cline-Ransome, while researching another book, came across a passage about pit schools and was profoundly moved by the risks enslaved people took to learn to read. The note ends with a quote from Frederick Douglas: “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”
The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson is not about school so much as it is about that feeling that we’ve all had at some time, for various reasons, that we do not fit: “There will be times you walk into a room/and no one there is quite like you.” … “There will be times when no one understands the way/words curl from your mouth, the beautiful language of the country you left behind.” Several spreads detail the ways we do not fit in — different hair, different food, different experiences [many kids travel to exciting places over summer break. Angelina stays home and reads stories with her little sister].
But Jacqueline Woodson knows the strength of kids, she tells readers that there will be times when “all that stands beside you is/ your own brave self — steady as steel and ready / even though you don’t yet know what you are ready for.” “Steady as steel and ready” is a phrase for all of us to carry in our pockets.
Then Angelina decides to tell the class about her summer. “There will be times when you walk into a room/and no one there is quite like you until the day you begin/to share your stories.” Angelina says, “My name is Angelina and/I spent my whole summer with my little sister, / reading books and telling stories / and even though we were right on our block it was like/we got to go EVERYWHERE.”
She learns and readers learn that we begin to belong when we share our stories. That is when we learn that “Every new friend has something a little like you — and something else so fabulously not quite like you at all.”
This is a book for all seasons — and all ages. Let us be “steady as steel and ready” to share the stories we’ve lived, the stories we love.