Back to School Books for Kids

Page Turner's Bookshelf Pick of the Week

If you've followed me for any length of time, you know my answer to almost every big kid feeling — nerves, worry, the jitters, the "I don't want to's — is the same: tell a story about it. Stories are how I've always helped kids (and honestly, myself) work through the stuff that feels too big to say out loud. Wrap a worry in a dinosaur, a pirate, or a Storyologist on a quest, and suddenly it's something a kid can hold, laugh at, and walk through instead of around.

So with so many of you looking for back to school books for kids right now, I wanted this week's Bookshelf pick to be one that does exactly that.

Why Stories Help with Back to School Worries

When it comes to back to school books for kids, here's the thing I believe down to my bones: kids don't need worries explained to them, they need worries turned into a story they can walk through. That's really the whole idea , a good book lets a child see themselves being brave first, safely, on the page, before they have to do it for real on the first day.

One of my favorite Back-to-School Books for Kids:

How Do Dinosaurs Go to School?

This It's Jane Yolen and Mark Teague's back-to-school entry in their beloved "How Do Dinosaurs…" series — the one where an enormous, gloriously naughty-looking dinosaur is dropped into an ordinary kid moment, and you get to imagine all the ways it could go wrong before it goes wonderfully right. Would a dinosaur stomp onto the school bus? Interrupt story time? Steal the show-and-tell spotlight? Of course. And then, of course, it doesn't. Turns out these dinosaurs are helpful, tidy, and protective of their friends.

It's a gentle, funny nudge toward good classroom behavior, wrapped in Yolen's signature rhyme and Teague's riot of a dinosaur cast — and honestly, one of the best back to school books for kids I've come across in a while, precisely because it never lectures. It just lets a kid laugh their way into feeling brave.

A Homage to Jane Yolen

This felt like the right pick for this particular week for another reason too. Jane Yolen passed away this past June, at her home in Massachusetts, at 87 years old — after writing more than 450 books across just about every genre a storyteller can touch: picture books, poetry, fantasy, folklore, historical fiction. She was often called the "Hans Christian Andersen of America," and if you've spent any time in the world of children's literature, you've felt her fingerprints somewhere, whether you knew her name or not.

I got to meet her once, years ago, at an International Reading Association conference where Kenny and I were hosting and filming. It was a brief moment in a busy hall, but it's stayed with me — the kind of encounter you don't fully appreciate until much later, when you realize you were standing in front of someone who shaped a whole generation's relationship with books.

So this week's Bookshelf pick is a small homage. A silly, big-footed, big-hearted book from a writer who spent her whole life proving that stories can be playful and meaningful at the same time — which, if I'm honest, is exactly what I'm always chasing too.

More Back to School Activities

Looking for imagination-powered ways to turn first-week jitters into a story kids can walk through instead of around? Grab my free guide, The Storyologist's Back to School Survival Guide, for more book picks, activities, story prompts, and tools to make the first weeks feel like an adventure instead of a worry.

This post is part of Page Turner's Bookshelf, where I share books from my own shelves — old favorites, new finds, and everything in between.