Picture Books Are Pure Magic

My first one is The Circles All Around Us, written by Brad Montague.

And I love this book year round.

Because I usually do it the first week of school because it's all about you as an individual.

So you can do lots of lessons about that.

But then who is around you? Your friends, your family, your community, your school, the different activities that you're part of outside of the school, those different groups that you belong to.

I love that it lends itself so well to that.

I also love that it lends itself visually.

So I always do a poster with every child.

So they get to create their own circle around us.

Then they get to talk about it.

With their partner, their small group, the whole class, if they're comfortable, we display them around the classroom.

And then it opens up conversations about that child as an individual, which I really love.

And then this year in my school, it just happened to be that we're talking about what is your ripple? So this idea of throwing a stone into water and seeing the ripples go out.

And I'm like, this is the perfect book for that, right? How does your impact spread to others? That's our school kind of thinking this year.

So just a beautiful book around different circles we have supporting us around us, how you can be a support for other people's circles.

And I just get such huge conversations going about even who is in my adult circle, right? I like to share with my kids.

I do one of myself as well.

And I share it to students and show them who's in my circle.

So that's my first choice.

What about you? What's your first book?

What a great choice.

Okay.

So the first book that I actually wanted to share, I don't have, I lent it out to someone, but have you heard of the book? Your name is a song.

Do you know that one? I love that

book.