Have You Read Teal?

I am always looking for new back to school read alouds. In the past I have read Chrysanthemum, A Bad Case of Stripes, and Pout Pout Fish Goes to School, among others. This year especially I have been looking because I am about to have a "new" batch of kids, many of whom I taught two years ago in 2nd grade.

Honestly, I have probably been too worried about this for too long until I found the book Teal by Renee Galvin.

This book is about a beautiful, confident teal crayon. He knows his worth and is generally a happy guy until it comes time to clean up. As all of the crayons go back to their labeled boxes, he feels alone. He's not quite blue and not quite green so he doesn't know where he belongs. After much thought and hard work, he finds a solution to bring all of his crayon friends together!
I absolutely love this book for a number of reasons:

1. It's so relatable. After all, everyone has felt left out at one point in their life, even if they generally feel secure. Use this book as an avenue to talk about including others and making sure we aren't left out.
2. The illustrations are absolutely adorable and provide a lot of clues for how the characters are feeling. This book perfectly lends itself to discussing facial expressions and how to read them along with characterization.
3. It's about school supplies and shows them being put back in their place. This would be a great book for younger grades to talk about clean up procedures and how to make sure everything is put away properly.

4. Teal has a growth mindset. Instead of staying sad about being left out, he comes up with a solution to his problem and brings everyone together! He doesn't give up!
5. It shows that we are more alike than different. I love books that remind us to celebrate our differences but also to come together in our similarities. This book does just that.
6. There is an art component when the colors come together at the end. I would absolutely read this to my class if I were an elementary art teacher to discuss the relationship between different colors.

If you can't tell, I am thrilled to add this book to my classroom library. This is how I plan to use it in my room this year (with a 4th grade class):
After reading the book, I will ask the students what the message of the book is. We will discuss the points above; why it's important to include everyone, how he worked hard to solve his problem and how the crayons came together.
After discussing the book, I will have the students get in a circle and talk to the two people they are between. They will figure out one thing they have in common and one thing that makes them different from each other. Then we will go around and introduce each other to the class and share what makes us the same and what makes us different. As we share, I will record our similarities and our differences on chart paper.
At the end of the activity, I will ask my students to journal about the experience and then to choose a color crayon that represents them and write about why.

I can see this book as being a true anchoring text for many different social lessons in my classroom and I cannot wait to read it to my students!

Thanks y'all!