Somewhere Over That Rainbow Is Me Crying Like A Girl
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This is the greatest book ever. It made me cry like a little diabetic girl when I reliased I would never myself own a dinosaur. Compelling stuff.
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Great to help your little one prepare for school
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Ian Whybrow's Harry and the dinosaurs/robots series is hugely successful. Here he takes the well-loved character from small anxiety (caused as always by his big sister) about starting school, through the first day there. Harry likes his teacher, finds his peg to hang his coat on, helps a little boy who is more scared than he is and makes a new friend in so doing. A simple, positive story about a real and important experience in most children's lives.
As adults we often want to tell children that "everything will be alright, don't worry". If they have genuine worries this approach dismisses their fears rather than helping them feel understood and supporting them to find solutions. In reading this book with my little boy it gave us chance to talk about what he was looking forward to in starting school and what he might be a little bit scared about. Hearing about how Harry ultimately enjoyed himself was very encouraging.
We read the book repeatedly in the run-up to starting school. By the time he got to the gates he'd forgotten all about his previously expressed anxieties and ran off into the mêlée. After a few days of being there we re-read the story (and still do from time to time) and my son spoke quite authoritatively that there is nothing to worry about in school. That in itself was quite an interesting learning experience about the nature of fear compared to real experience ...!
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