Well, it is the last week of summer in my house. Both my daughters and I return to school next week. I know there can be mixed feelings about this, but we are looking forward to it. We are gathering new backpacks, new lunch boxes, and new school supplies. We are excited to see all our friends again and learn new things.

I thought this week we would look at a story that gets all of in the mood for school, Laura Numeroff‘s If You Take a Mouse to School. In this story we follow Mouse and Boy when they go to school. The boy takes on a parent-like role and has to deal with a demanding mouse in this circular story. Together they venture through a typical elementary school day from dressing in the morning and packing a lunch (Mouse asks for a lunchbox), working on reading, math, science experiments, choice time, and recess before riding the bus home. And as it often happens with students, Mouse realizes he left something behind and has to run back for... the lunchbox!

Laura Numeroff has a series of books that follow the circular story style: If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, If You Give a Pig a Pancake and (a personal favorite in our house) If You Give a Moose a Muffin. These stories end where they started - a circle. A circle or cycle is presented in many lessons in school, primarily science. The life cycle of butterflies and frogs are commonly looked at, the water cycle (evaporation, condensation, precipitation), the seasons, and lately the recycling of products to keep our Earth green. Laura Numeroff’s “If You Give ...” series shows how our actions set off a domino effect or a series of events.

A circular story offers a few lessons for readers. The first is cause and effect: one action leads to another. In If You Take a Mouse to School, Mouse builds a dwelling out of blocks, decks it out with clay furniture and realizes his bookshelf needs books. So Mouse asks for paper and pencil to make books, wants to read his story to you (Goodnight Mouse), decides to take the book home, and then ... well you get the idea. This style of story helps the reader with sequencing the events of a story and also helps the reader understand the structure (beginning, middle, and end) of a story. With a circular story, we know how the story starts and ends. In If You Take a Mouse to School, Mouse asks for Boy’s lunchbox. Children then work out the order of the middle events that connect the beginning and the ending.

Circular stories also help the reader with prediction strategies. The website Read Write Think quotes Joy Moss that prediction strategies “encourage students to ‘learn to construct a working interpretation of the story based on the clues they gather and to revise or refine this interpretation as they find new information in and generate new meaning from the unfolding text’. Eventually, students ‘internalize these strategies and use them on their own to make sense of texts they listen to or read independently’” (Moss 67-68).

So, Laura Numeroff’s If You Take a Mouse to School is a great read to get ready for the new school year cycle. Let's look forward to homework, science fair projects, holiday vacations, soccer games, and class concerts. Fire up the school bus and let the fun begin!

Note: After reading If You Take a Mouse to School and you are feeling adventurous, Chicago’s Emerald City Theatre has a play adaptation of the book that is running this month.

book photos: lauranumeroff.com