I'm New Here

A lovely heartwarming story of a diverse community of students welcoming everyone. This book took me back to my days in college where my son and I lived in family housing with almost exclusively international students. He had friends from all over the world and, just like the children in this book, even though they may not speak the language, they all knew the universal language of smiling and playing.

A great story about adapting and fitting in. I once had a student who only spoke Arabic. It took a while for him to adjust. A book like this would have been great for him (once he learned English that is!)

It isn't a simple children's book. It shows the difficulty of being an immigrant child with language barriers, cultural difference etc... It teaches to be nice to foreigners and help them to adapt the new place.

Three students from different countries in the world move to the United States. Maria is from Guatemala, Jin, is a South Korean boy, and Fatimah is a Somali girl who who wears a hijab.

The author paints pictures of each child's struggle to fit in and learn at their new school. Maria has trouble learning the language, in her country the language flows like water and the children are chatting constantly to each other. Jin struggles with the letters thus inhibiting his ability to read the stories that he loves. Fatima feels different from the others and isolated which causes her anxiety because she doesn't fit into the norm of the classroom.

Slowly the three children are accepted into the school community. Through sports, art and shared stories they start to bond and be accepted by those around them.

The illustrations are watercolour-and-digitally created also by the author. It's wonderful to see other diverse students in the classroom setting, like the one in a wheelchair. Through author's notes you learn how difficult this transition is and the different reasons why families choose to emigrate to a new country. You learn about the children's persistence to carry on and not give up, how brave they must be to come into a strange environment each day to learn, and how happiness prevails when they are finally included into the school community.

O'Brien knows exactly those feelings because she too at one time was an immigrant which gives her authority to speak on the subject. It is a wonderful book to share in a classroom setting with your students and then have a conversation about accepting new children into your class and even into your whole school.

"I'm New Here" is a wonderful story of 3 children from different countries that are new to the United States. It shows their fear and confusion in their school. It is a very simple story that ends with the children feeling at home in the new community. I will add this book to my elementary school library and recommend the title to our ESOL teacher.

A wonderful story showing children how scary it can be as the new student in a school. This would be a great book to share with students prior to the arrival of a new classmate, and for children when THEY will be the new student in a class.

Being new to a place is never easy and yet it is something more and more children have to deal with. The simple text and lovely accompanying illustrations of this book will make it a wonderful resource to use with "new" and "old" students alike. The book promotes understanding and empathy, showing how we can all help to build a community.

This was a perfect representation of what it’s like to start over. I thought it did an excellent job of showing each part of learning to live in a new culture. Both kids that are new here and kids that have a new kid in their class will learn from and appreciate this story.

This is a lovely picture book featuring children from different countries sharing how difficult it is at first to go to a new school when they move to America and how nice it is to learn the language and make friends. I think this book is great for preschool and elementary school age children. I received this book free to review from Netgalley and I highly recommend it!

This thought-provoking new picture book follows the stories of three recent immigrants as they try to adjust to their new lives in the United States. The story alternates point-of-view from Maria from Guatemala, Jin from Korea, and Fatimah from Somalia. Each child has a unique way of explaining his/her own difficulties during the adjustment process, and each is helped in different ways by classmates.

This will be a great book for sharing at the beginning of the school year, as it has a lot to stay about classroom communities and how to be warm and inviting to all. Kids could brainstorm different ways to reach out to others and to be more welcoming. I will definitely be adding this book to my classroom library.

Sweet story. Good to read to children who have moved to a new country and a classroom with a new student. Very simple plot with a lot of opportunity to stimulate discussion.

This will be a particularly good book for us. We have an extremely mixed bag culturally. There will be a lot of our kids who will totally relate to the kids in the book. This is also the only book I've ever seen about adjusting to a new place that's presented as nonfiction.