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Don’t Hug Doug can make kids feel better about their own boundaries, and challenge them to understand the comfort of others. But really, it gives grown-ups something to consider, too.”— Boston Globe
Simple and effective in showing young viewers how to establish bodily autonomy . . . A great starting point for a conversation about boundaries and how to set them.”— The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools. I also love this book because the illustrations (by Daniel Wiseman) and the diverse group of characters are absolutely delightful!In Don’t Hug Doug, author, Carrie Finison, specifically includes lessons in boundary-setting and respecting others’ choices, as well as, in asking for consent. She does this in a way that kids ages 2-8 can really understand and incorporate into their own lives.
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.