E Pluribus Unum! All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold

The school bell is ringing. It's time to cine together in a classroom. What will it be like? Well, all kids like a lot of the same things.

LET'S ALL TAKE PART.

WE'LL ALL MAKE ART.

Kids are clapping and singing, and then sprawling on the floor to finish coloring their pictures of things they like. And then it's time for recess.

OR IF YOU COME FROM FAR AWAY...

ALL ARE WELCOME HERE.

Kids of different colors and in different clothes are ready to run outside. They like to swing and slide, and hop on the merry-go-round and take a ride!

Back in the classroom it's time to learn about dinosaurs and slime, bugs and volcanos. The world is full of different things to know. And when at lunch, there are a dozen kinds of bread in different people's lunches, anyone can have a taste. There are so many new things to try that school time seems to fly. Tomorrow is another day, another time to say, "All are welcome."

Author Alexandra Penmore's rhyming story of a day at school, All Are Welcome (Alfred E. Knopf) demonstrates her theme that diversity is the best way to deal with adversity, as our motto E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One) bravely says, and she shows all kinds of kids who get to school in all kinds of ways, sharing their school days. Artist Suzanne Kaufman fills her busy and colorful illustrations with humor and fun as the kids sing and play, learn and share their day with each other in this New York Times best-selling picture book about school days for all.

Beware the School Bus! Superhero Vs. School by Ethan Long

IN THE DARKEST NIGHT, YOU WILL FIND OUR HERO HURLING HIMSELF INTO ACTION. BUT REAL DANGER IS NEAR... THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL.

Despite Scotty's superpowers, our hero cannot stop time. The holidays are over. Not even a new backpack and a new shirt, freshly ironed by Mom, can ward off the mental miasma of the math worksheet, the horrors of the history book, the scourge of the science test, the stomach-churning special in the lunchroom, or the peril of the playground!

Beware! The Dreaded School Bus cometh! The dark and dangerous SCHOOL grows near!

But, WAIT! Who does he see, standing guard in front of the school?

Scotty is not alone! His five fearless friends--FIVE SUPERHEROES--equipped with crusading capes, bad-grade-blocking bracelets, and super-soaring powers--are ready to zoom into action and meet the challege of scholarship!

Scotty is feeling so empowered that he offers his new teacher an apple!

It's super school-power, in the award-winning Ethan Long's latest, Superhero vs. School (Bloomsbury, 2020), as Scotty gets by with a little help from his friends. As an illustrator, Long's style has become familiar to the picture-book crowd, and his spirited heroes have long triumphed in his humorous hits, such as Fright Club and Fangsgiving. (See reviews here.)

Creative License: If I Built A School by Chris Van Dusen

Jack has some ideas for jazzing up his school.

For example, the foyer is dreadfully dull.

If I built a school, the first thing you'd meet
Are lots of cute puppies! They'd flock to your feet.

Heck! Jack would also add a few zoo animals to enliven the entryway! And getting to classrooms would be by pods shooting through pneumatic tubes!

Teachers in Jack's school would be spared the chores of cleaning chalky erasers or messy marker wipes:

Using a stylus, you write in the air.
No blackboard. No whiteboard. No, nothing is there.

And forget the chore of pushing your desks together for group sessions. Jack's got the best gismos to speed up those lessons.

These are my hover desks. See how they glide?
They even have bumpers in case they collide.

And Jack is thinkin' about a hologram of Lincoln--making a history lesson a 3-D session!. And to spice up gym sports, how's about trampoline-floored basketball courts? Or a cooling perimeter pool? And how about perks for the playground? Ziplines way up to the sky? And a twisty slide from three floors high?

And for sure, field trips should out-sizzle Ms. Frizzle in Jack's versatile vehicle which can morph-- from undersea to outer space--or any old place!

A guy can dream, can't he? In Chris Van Dusen's funny, fantasy picture book, If I Built a School (Dial Books, 2019), Jack's dream school has something for everyone, from critter-crazy kids to gismo geeks. Van Dusen's bouncy rhyming quatrains make this one a breeze to read, aloud or solo, and Van Dusen's brand of Seussian illustrations give Mulberry Street a run for the money in this new top-selling hit. Younger kids will laugh at the preposterous silliness, and older students will find the story line a great springboard for imaginative writers and young inventors, one that will fire up some creativity among the primary grade set.

Author-illustrator Chris Van Dusen also has two other popular book in this series, If I Built a House and If I Built a Car.

Speaking Up! The Loud Silence of Francine Green by Karen Cushman

"Holy cow!" I said when Sophie Bowman told me she'd be joining me at All Saints School for Girls this year. "I got thrown out of public school," said Sophie. "It was either Catholic school or boarding school. Sister Basil thinks my soul can still be saved."

"Why?" I asked.

"That's what she learned in nun school, I suppose," said Sophie.

"No," I said. "Why did you get kicked out?"

"Oh, that. For writing 'THERE IS NO FREE SPEECH HERE' on the gym floor. In paint. Red paint."

Francine is devoted to staying mostly unnoticed at All Saints, where it was more important to stay out of trouble than to excel at learning. Sophie is devoted to fighting fascism and pursuing free speech. Francine's family is conventional, devoted to blending in, avoiding criticism. But Sophie is a risk taker, and in their unlikely friendship, Francine finds herself doing daring things like wearing her uniform beanie aslant like a French beret and skipping school to take the bus to Hollywood to spot Montgomery Cliff entering a premier.

It was eight thirty before a limousine pulled up. It was only Olivia de Haviland. I was saving my cheers for Monty.

Another limousine came. Out stepped Elizabeth Taylor, gorgeous in white mink. And behind her, standing on the same earth, in the same city, on the same block as Francine Green, was Montgomery Clift, in person. "He's looking at us!" I screamed.

Next to me, Sophie, being Sophie, shouted "Ban the bomb!"

And from Sophie the sheltered Francine learns about the McCarthy hearings and its restrictions on freedom of expression and about the Bomb, and she is shocked to see the wage earners of families she knows being accused of being Communists and fired from their Hollywood jobs. Sister Basil at All Saints says the atomic bomb will save them from godless Communism, but Sophie's dad says the H-bomb could mean the end of all life on earth.

And when Sophie's father himself loses his job at the movie studio, Francine has to make a choice--on her own.

My father lit a cigarette."The FBI has a job to do--keeping us safe. Maybe a little unfairness is a small price to pay for security."

"But, Sophie--"

"I keep telling you, you shouldn't be involved with them. It's serious business. Be quiet, do what you're told, and stay out of the way."

Francine's mom tells her it's her father's job to keep them safe. Then, after a moment, she offers to makes an extra tuna casserole for Francine to take to the Bowmans.

"Sometimes we aren't sure what we should do," she says. "Be patient with us."

And in the troubled time of 1949, Francine Green finds her own voice, in the new edition of the Newbery Award-winning Karen Cushman's The Loud Silence of Francine Green (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). Francine Green is very much a girl of her time, a time of root beer floats and movie magazines, the time of the Cold War and Congressional Commie hunts, and the H-bomb, but she is also a universal character. Sister Pete had told her to do right and be honest and do what is pleasing to God, and finally Francine finds a way to speak up, to tell her own truth. A coming-of-age book for young adult readers in any time, this one speaks to middle graders who must begin to find their own truth and their own voices in their own time.

Terror! Time Bomb by Joelle Charbonneau

"Don't fight!" said Cas. "Can we turn the radio back on? Maybe they'll tell us help is finally coming."

Rashid clicked on the radio. The announcer was telling everyone that the firefighters were making progress:

"With one person of interest being questioned, authorities are working to find another individual they have confirmed is involved in this terrible bombing. A source confirms that the individual is one of the students trapped on the second floor of the school. With four bombs having already gone off, there appears to be one explosive device still inside the school that could detonate at any time."

Another bomb was ready to go off, and the bomber was one of them.

It is the week before the new academic year begins. Six students leave their homes to go to their school, each one concealing the real personal reason to be there--from setting up a complex prank to suicide and murder.

Diana knows that all her father cares about is for her to be the flawless Congressman's daughter.

She was determined to prove him wrong.

Rashid thinks of the looks he'd gotten at school since his beard, the one he wasn't allowed to shave off, had grown.

Hitching up the bag, Rashid frowned. If he was going to change things, he had to do it today.

Z's mom has died of cancer, and without money, he'd just received the letter telling him he's about to become homeless.

Z grabbed his father's old army duffle. He had things to do. He was going to school, and he wasn't coming back.

Frankie's sister has  figured out he's pulling some big prank on the Junior Varsity guys. Frankie knows he made a mistake with Tad. But it's a mistake no one in school would ever believe about their star quarterback.

Frankie adjusted the bag on his arm and pushed all thoughts of Tad to the side. It was time to finish what he'd started.

Everywhere--on the football team, at school, at home, Tad is tired of pretending to be someone only he knows he can no longer be.

He grabbed his gym bag. Everything was there. He was going to insist on being noticed. And it wouldn't be just his life that changed if he went through with this.

Cas had thought things might be different in her new school, but they have already decided she wasn't good enough.

She jammed the stupid scarf into her bag and yanked open one of the glass doors to the school. She was done with it all.

Now, bruised and bleeding, some with broken bones, all six of them are trapped in a collapsing building with a raging fire spreading inside. Outside fire fighters can't enter because of the remaining bomb that may explode at any moment. They came with very different purposes, but now all but one have only one thought, to survive, and for that they need each other.

Joelle Charbonneau's forthcoming thriller, Time Bomb (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018) is a mystery thriller, a survival story as timely as yesterday's news, and a sensitive story of six teenagers at a pivotal moment in their lives, a story in which they know that, although one of them is a terrorist, they need all of them if anyone is to escape death.

Noted for her trilogy, The Testing, a series of dystopian novels about a band of competitive teens who come together to save their society, author Charbonneau knows how to create believable but disparate characters whose fate depends upon their ability to meet a challenge to their survival. Introducing the protagonists in brief thumbnail chapters written in their own voices, she gradually reveals their secrets while keeping the reader guessing who the real bomber is until the ending. No one of them comes out of that building the same as they went in, in a page-turning survival story of school violence that will have readers wondering what they would do when the bombs go off.