TaleForMe
A book for the week before school starts
Written around the question they keep asking.
Children do not worry about school in general. They worry about one specific thing: the toilets, the lunchbox, whether you are definitely coming back, whether anyone will play with them.
This is the book where you tell us that exact thing, and the story answers it — on the page, in words a four-year-old can hold on to at the gate.
Name the worry, don’t skip it
A book that pretends the first day is nothing but exciting is no use to a child who is frightened. Our school stories name the difficult feeling, let the child feel it, and then move through it. There is no lecture at the end.
Read it a few times in the fortnight before. By the morning itself it will be familiar, and familiar is the whole point.
It works for the second child too
Starting a new school, moving up to big school, changing class, a new childminder, a new country. Same idea: tell us what is actually changing.
Questions
What do I write in the “anything special” box?
Exactly what you would tell a friend. “She is starting preschool next month and is worried nobody will know her name.” That one sentence changes the whole book.
Can their teacher or new friend be in it?
Yes, if you know the names. If you do not, the story invents a friend rather than leaving them alone in it.
Make their school book
Five minutes, nothing to pay, and you read the opening pages before you decide.