Still Sal by Kevin Henkes

Sal is excited. She is about to begin Grade One. Sal has all her special supplies ready:

At the moment, the school supplies were the things in Sal’s life that made her most happy; the things that gave her a little joyful lift just by thinking about them. The box held brightly colored pencils with glittery stars on them, an eraser shaped like a cupcake for the top of a pencil, and two folders and two notebooks with photographs of baby animals on them—piglets, kittens, puppies, lambs.

Her outfit is ready too:

Sal got dressed in the outfit she’d been planning for days. Pink-and-blue plaid tights. Pale-green corduroy pants that came just below her knees. A shirt patterned with yellow and orange suns. Red sneakers. ... Sal had picked out a cloth headband—her most comfortable one. It was white with purple stripes. She was avoiding her hard plastic ones with teeth. She pushed the headband on and patted it into position. “Ready.”

Then a letter arrives and it seems Sal and her best friend in the whole world Griff (Griffen Babcock) will be in different classes. Griff will have a teacher with such a wonderful name - Ms. Flowers. Surely there is a way Sal can change classes and not be in Ms. McCormick's class.

Ms. Flowers’s hair was dark and curly like Sal’s, but cut very short and accessorized with an ABC barrette. She was wearing red sneakers, also like Sal’s, and jeans that were frayed and fringy at the bottom. Her belt appeared to be a tape measure. She looked like a fun babysitter. She smelled like strawberry jam. Sal’s heart leaped.

This is a year of change for Sal. Her baby sister Poppy has moved into her room and Sal is not happy. Griff seems to be making new friends. AND everything, just everything that can go wrong at school, goes wrong. For example my heart broke for Sal when she saw her name label was wrong (this happens me too):

She was looking at her name tag with narrow eyes. There was a new problem. Although Ms. McCormick had cut off the second L and the Y, she’d made her cut so close to the first L that if you didn’t look carefully, you might think Sal’s name was Sa. Also, there’d been a nice border around each name on the name tags, and now the border on Sal’s was gone on the right side. And, the cut edge was crooked. Sal’s name tag didn’t look professional anymore, and it was different from everyone else’s. Stinging tears came to Sal’s eyes. She knew she shouldn’t ask Ms. McCormick to fix her name tag again, but, still, she found the whole thing upsetting.

Kids in Australia are sure to enjoy all the clothes Sal wears - here children wear school uniforms. Sal's choices each day reminded me of Goonie Bird Greene. 

I love the way Sal tries to convince her parents that two-year-old Poppy should not move in:

“I just don’t think she’ll be a good resident of this room,” Sal had told her parents, trying to be as serious as possible, narrowing her eyes, tilting her head, and pitching her voice to sound important. “I just don’t think she’s responsible enough to be here.”

I also love Sal's dad - he is a parent with quiet wisdom and he can make delicious pancakes.

With a group of older kids in Grade 3 perhaps, you could use this book to talk about the way teachers are different - not to criticise just to explore different ways teachers might cover a topic or relate to their class. You could also talk about the way Sal observes the kids in her class. Oh and I cheered when Sal does speak up - she certainly is not a shy child but she does have an understanding of some adult rules such as not using the teacher's first name even though she is so delighted when she makes this discovery.

I think my hairdresser would enjoy reading chapter 19:

The hair salon was called Hair We Go and it smelled important. Like the smells of a doctor’s office and a flower shop mixed together. Brooke was the name of the woman who was to cut Sal’s hair. Brooke’s thin, straight hair was shoulder length and streaked with pink and green. Sal couldn’t take her eyes off it. She wondered how old you had to be to get pink and green hair, although she wasn’t sure if she’d actually want to have it.

As an adult reader I adored this fourth book about the Miller family - I hope young readers aged 7+ will also enjoy this book but they might find the tone used by Sal a little too mature? I need to think about this a little more. The Kirkus reviewer says: Fairly sophisticated language and observations stretch the target audience to include third and fourth graders for whom first grade may be a distant memory. I was delighted to see Kirkus gave Still Sal a Star review:

Henkes’ graceful, easy prose, sharp insights, and impressive ability to convey the way children think shine here. He invites readers to empathize with Sal, feeling her disappointment and annoyance with a world that doesn’t always understand her as well as the satisfaction with small victories that bring her back to herself: getting used to a major haircut and learning to connect with Ms. McCormick. ...  A delightful, understated triumph.

Blurb from Kevin Henkes web page: Sal has been looking forward to first grade for a long time. But her excitement quickly turns to disappointment when she learns that her best friend, Griff, is in the other first-grade classroom and has the most popular teacher. Then Sal’s name is spelled wrong on her name tag, she trips in front of the cool fifth graders, and her self-portrait doesn’t turn out the way she wanted it to. In fact, everything about school is an absolute disaster. Poor Sal! Luckily for Sal, she has understanding parents, a terrific new teacher, and empathetic friends who remind her that it takes time to adjust to change. And sure enough, after a few days, Sal feels like herself again.

Still Sal highlights themes of family, friendship, social and emotional growth, resilience, and adapting to change. The fourth stand-alone book in the Miller Family sequence includes black-and-white illustrations by Caldecott Medal winner Kevin Henkes on almost every page and is an excellent choice for early elementary grades, for readers ready for a short novel, and for family and classroom read-alouds.

AND there will be another book in this series later this year - Poppy.

If I worked in a bookshop I would love to make a window display of this series. Here are the four titles from the series so far and I also think all Primary school libraries should own every one of them - you can read more from the links below. All four of these have Kirkus Star reviews:

The Year of Billy Miller; Billy Miller makes a Wish

Click on the Kevin Henkes label on this post to read about more of his books - for all ages!