First Grade, Here I Come!

by Tony Johnston, David Walker (Illustrator)

Overview

From award-winning author Tony Johnston and David Walker comes the perfect book for first time First Graders!

Kindergarten? Done! "I'm zooming off to first grade now.I need about five friendsto play good games like hide-and-sneakand where-the-sidewalk-ends."Tony Johnston's playful stanzas meet with David Walker's joyful art to create a remarkable foray into first grade--with all its peaks and valleys. There's reading and counting, sure, but also show-and-tell, singing, crafts, and of course, recess! Watch out everyone, 'cause first grade, here I come!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780545565721
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	06/30/2015
Sold by:	Scholastic, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
File size:	5 MB
Age Range:	5 - 7 Years

About the Author

Tony Johnston is the author of nearly 100 picture books and early readers, including The Iguana Brothers, illustrated by Mark Teague. Her first novel, ANY SMALL GOODNESS: A NOVEL OF THE BARRIO, was named an NCTE Notable Children's Book in the Language Arts, an IRA Notable Book for a Global Security, and a Judy Lopez Memorial Honor Book. It was also awarded the first annual Southern California Booksellers' Association Children's Book Award. Ms. Johnston lives in California with her husband.

David F. Walker is an award-winning comic book writer, author, filmmaker, journalist, and educator. His work in comic books includes Shaft, winner of the 2015 Glyph Award for Story of the Year, Luke Cage;Occupy Avengers;Power Man and Iron Fist;Nighthawk;Fury;Secret Wars: Battleworld (Marvel Comics); Cyborg (DC Comics); The Army of Dr. Moreau;Tarzan on the Planet of the Apes (Dark Horse/Boom); and Number 13 (Dark Horse Comics). In 2015, he wrote the novel Shaft’s Revenge, the first new novel starring private detective John Shaft in nearly 40 years.

Recognized as a leading scholar and expert on African-American cinema, who has been interviewed by such news outlets as The Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, and BBC, Walker produced one of the definitive documentaries on the topic of Blaxploitation films. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Editorial Reviews

05/11/2015
In this upbeat story, a ginger-haired boy eagerly imagines all that awaits him in first grade: wowing the teacher with his counting skills, playing with his friends, and more. Johnston’s verses are a mixed bag, exuding an almost stream-of-consciousness energy and playfulness, but sometimes grasping to satisfy their rhymes (“We’ll be space guys in fat suits,/ so bold and brave and big./ Our mascot will be brave and pink./ Oh, he will be a pig”). Walker’s first-graders are sweet and lively throughout (at one point, the narrator surprises his teacher by bringing his boa constrictor, Huggy Boy, in for show-and-tell), and nervous students may still take inspiration from the boy’s over-the-moon enthusiasm. Ages 5–7. (June)

Publishers Weekly

2015-05-12
A redheaded boy imagines the fun he will have in first grade if he just has five friends to share it with. Johnston's rhyming salute to a young boy's imagination includes some activities that children may do in first grade—snack time, reading, math at the board, parading with cardboard drums, making paper chains, recess, being in a play, visiting the nurse—but the kids seem to spend more time playing than most first graders. Many of the verses force the rhymes, either by choosing words and making them fit (when pretending to be "big" astronauts—"space guys"—they have a "pig" mascot) or by relying on nonsense words or onomatopoeia: "I'll need at least five friends to play / the Rubber Family. / We'll stretch our faces and ourselves / like pretzels. Tee-hee-hee!" And why five friends? It's never really clear why he needs exactly that many, and in the end, even he decides that he'd "rather be / good friends with—EVERYONE!" Walker's artwork does a nice job of capturing the exuberance and activity of a group of first graders (though they don't have the individual personalities of the kids in Carey Armstrong-Ellis' illustrations for The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), written by Deborah Lee Rose), and the boy's five friends are relatively diverse—one Asian child, two black children, two girls. Skip. (Picture book. 4-6)

Kirkus Reviews