Movin' On Up! Graduation Groove by Kathryn Heling and Deborah Hernbrook

Got the graduation groove,

In my kindergarten feet.

I'm zipping up my gown.

To a first-grade beat.

The members of the class are gowned up, trying on their mortarboards, posing for pictures, filled with fun of celebration, and a bit nervous about moving on to Grade 1 and all the newness it promises. It's been quite a year of new things to know--different friends, letters and numbers, and field trips to new places, but now the graduation bus is taking them to a ceremony and what lies ahead of that!

Got the graduation groove

In my kindergarten knees.

I'm waiting on the stage,

When suddenly... I FREEZE.

It's a big moment, one of life's many transitions, full of thoughts of all they've done and learned, the friends they made, their lonely class hamster, left behind until first grade?

Movin' up is a happy-sad time. Like all graduations, there's that feeling of closing one door and walking through another. But after summer vacation, they'll all re-unite, feeling big and COOL, on the way to big school, in Kathryn Heling's and Deborah Hernbrook's brand-new "last day of school" book, Graduation Groove (Little Bee Books, 2021). The authors' rhyming quatrains sum up the feeling of the big event, and Artist Addy Rivera Sonda's jolly illustrations and endpapers recall happy Kindergarten days--games at recess, building tall towers, learning letters and numbers, Halloween costumes and Christmas parties, field trips to the dinosaur museum--all of which together combine just-right feeling of nostalgia and excitement about what comes next in first grade. Says Kirkus, "A solid pick for the end of a momentous year."