It's the last week of school, the walls are half bare, and you want the read-alouds to say the thing you can't quite say out loud: you did it, I'm proud of you, off you go. This is a classroom set of send-off books, the bittersweet, you-made-it, whole-summer-ahead kind. Some are funny, some will get a lump in your throat. Pick by your grade and by the mood of the day, and read whichever one fits the goodbye you're saying.
Every book here does one job: it marks the end of the year and points a child, gently, toward what's next. Pick by your grade and by the goodbye you're saying. The youngest rooms will want the funny, rhyming ones, Last Day Blues and Wherever You Go, and the picture-book cheer of Oh, the Places You'll Go! and The Wonderful Things You Will Be. Older rooms, third grade and up, can sit with the quieter, deeper ones, Miss Rumphius, All the Places to Love, and Someday, which reward a class ready to feel the bittersweet of a year ending. They run loosely from the brightest and funniest to the most tender, but any single one carries the whole idea of the send-off on its own.