1st Grade (Age 6)

Pay attention to Olivia. This is her debut, and I’m certain she will be in our lives for years to come. Falconer has created a treasure: spare text; black, white, and red drawings; and spunky Olivia, a theatrical pig with a clear sense of herself!

Everyone’s favorite Caldecott Honor-winning porcine heroine and #1 Kris Kringle enthusiast is helping to make the season brighter than ever. Christmas is coming, and Olivia is incredibly busy. She has to wait for Santa, make sure Dad sets up the tree, wait for Santa, watch Mom make the Christmas dinner, wait for Santa, oversee the care with which the stockings are hung, and, of course, open her presents! Do you see how hard it is to be so helpful during the holidays? A lovingly told and lavishly illustrated Olivia Helps with Christmas is the perfect stuffing for any stocking, and …

On the Night You Were Born weaves rich illustrations and comforting language to promote in children a deep sense of their own worth. Geese fly home to celebrate. Polar bears dance. The world comes alive with thanksgiving. Before the tale ends, children will be wiggling their toes and whispering their names in joyous celebration of their own unique wonder.

This nonsensical romp through a gallery of imaginary creatures introduces beginning readers to a variety of rhyming letter combinations. Meet the Yink, who likes to wink and drink pink ink. Or the Yop, who hops from finger top to finger top. Then there is morose Ned who doesn’t like his little bed. The short anecdotal poems have just the right combination of humor and the fantastic to enrapture readers.

In return for a good deed, young Rani asks the greedy raja for just one grain of rice — doubled every day for 30 days. In a month she collects more than one billion grains of rice, enough to save the starving people of her village and to teach the raja a thing or two about wisdom . . . and math!

Tooth school is in session and 32 raucous students — including eight incisors, four canines, eight premolars, and twelve molars — get lessons on preventing tooth decay from Dr. Flossman. Your students will love the book’s wacky illustrations (wisdom teeth sport glasses, a vampire wears braces) and hilarious puns (”Buses . . . might be a little late because of some bridgework being done”). And they will also learn how to properly take care of their teeth.

This guessing-game picture book will stretch the vocabularies of students and engage your entire class. Here’s how it works: On one page you’ll find a bold verb like “swing” with an illustration showing just part of an animal (for a hint). On the next page, you’ll find the animal itself — in this case, an ape. MacDonald’s paint-and-collage illustrations are wonderful and particularly good at showing animals in motion. At the end of the book are several pages of “animal facts.”

Gritch, the witch, wants piggies to put into her pie, but the pigs outsmart her at every turn. When she meets up with a wolf, also the victim of the pigs’ cleverness, the two hungry creatures go off arm in arm to an imagined conclusion that is fitting and funny.