Picture Books for Back-to-School

I'm joining yet another linky today with First Grade and Fabulous!

I L-O-V-E picture books!  Who am I kidding?  I love all books.  Mostly kid-lit and YA, but who cares. One of my good teacher-friends texted me the other day after reading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and said, "Whoever said YA is just for teens is a complete idiot!"  I whole-heartedly agree!

Anyways, I'm linking up with DeAnne to talk about my favorite picture books for the first week of school.

First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg.  Surprisingly, most of my students have never heard this book when they get to fourth grade, which makes the ending even more fun!  

I truly identify with Miss Malarkey in this book, Miss Malarkey Leaves No Reader Behind by Judy Finchler and Kevin O'Malley.  I'm sure many of my students agree.  Miss Malarkey refuses to give up until she puts the right book in each child's hand.  

I use A Crazy Day at the Critter Cafe by Barbara Odanaka when I am introducing Daily 5 and CAFE. It's just a fun book when we start talking about the CAFE reading strategies.  

How I Spent My Summer Vacation by Mark Teague is a fun tall-tale about a boy and his summer adventures.  It is also a great book to jump start your first writing assignment for the year-have students write their own tall-tale vacation stories!

Nothing builds a classroom community like bucket-filling!  How Full is Your Bucket? For Kids teaches kids how their words and actions affect others.  I didn't read this or do bucket-filling last year, but I will definitely be starting right off the bat this year!  

Make sure you go check out all the other awesome back to school picture books and link up with