The Day You Begin opens with, “There will be times when you walk into a room and no one there is quite like you.”  It can be the color of your skin, the language you speak, how you spent summer vacation or what your mom packed in your lunch. But strange and unfamiliar can become welcomed and fascinating when the new child in class is brave enough to share her story and others are kind enough to listen and find “something a little like you–and something else so fabulously not quite like you at all” to celebrate and enjoy. This would be a wonderful read-aloud for a classroom when a new student joins them. Wouldn’t every new child love a teacher who says “your name and homeland sound like flowers blooming the first bright notes of a song?”

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