First Day: The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson

There will be a day when you walk into a room and no one there is quite like you.

Maybe it will be your skin, your clothes, or the curl of your hair.

The first day in a new class is hard. No one wants to be the odd one out, and when the teacher does the "what I did this summer" round robin. When Angelina listens to all the summer stories of flying  to other states and other continents, she feels like the only one who stayed home and looked after her little sister  and read lots of books. The teacher calls on a new boy to introduce himself.

"I'm Rigoberto from Venezuela," he says.

The class laughs, until the teacher repeats it softly and his name sounds almost like music.

And when Angelina says her long name, the kids stare at her until Rigoberto speaks right up.

"Your name is like my sister's. Her name is also Angelina."

And all at once in the room where on one else is quite like you, the world opens up a little wider to make some space for you.

And all at once Angelina feels comfortable telling how in her summer she read books to her little sister and to herself long after bedtime and realizes that like them, she, too, took flight to many places, and she begins to tell her class about what she read.

Feeling like the stranger in the room is an almost universal experience at some time in life. It may be a classroom, a college, an office, or a new town, but finding some connection with strangers makes it easier to see the things we may have in common. In her best-selling The Day You Begin (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2018) the Newbery Medalist and National Book Award winning Jacqueline Woodsen's first-day story, illustrated by award-winning artist Rafael Lopez, is a sort of parable for children in dealing with new situations, finding what you have in common and valuing what you may not share at first. This is a fine book for the first day of school; as Publisher's Weekly said, "Woodsen's gentle, lilting story and Lopez's artistry create a stirring portrait of the courage it takes to be yourself."

Jacqueline Woodson has won the American Library Association's John Newbery Award for Brown Girl Dreaming, After Tupac and D Foster (Newbery Honor Book), Feathers, and Show Way. (See reviews here)