Books about behaving appropriately

We just finished up the book fair at school and I'm so relieved it's over with. It's SO much fun. The kids LOVE buying books and we get to see a lot of books that we wouldn't normally get to see. The kids love to look at the Guinness book of world records and the Ripley's Believe it or not books (although the guy with the snakes coming out of his nose and mouth seemed a little over the top to me) and since I refuse to buy those for the media center anymore, it's the book fair or Costco! But it is EXHAUSTING and busy and I'm so glad on Friday afternoon, I packed everything away so when I come in on Monday morning, we can go back to our regular routine. A teacher from the local university stopped in during the book fair (she supervises student teachers at our school) and she asked for books that could help with teaching behavior management. She's going to be teaching a class at our university this fall and she was looking for trade books to put on her reading list. I thought of a couple that might work. One was at the book fair. It was called Clark the Shark by Bruce Hale. This fantasy fiction story is about Clark who goes to school and he's big and loud and excited to be at school. Unfortunately, he's SO big and SO exuberant that he's pretty annoying. His teacher suggests to him that he should make up rhyming rules to help him through some of the trouble spots he's been having. It works and he's able to help teach the new octopus the same trick. What I liked about this was that even though the teacher gave him the idea, Clark was the one to identify the trouble spots (like eating everyone else's lunch) and create the rhymes to help him remember how to behave. I think this would be a great story to read at the beginning of the year (or maybe right now) to start a conversation on self-regulation. Here's a reading of the whole book! Another one that is also a book about self regulation is an older book by Molly Bang called When Sophie Gets Angry. In this realistic picture book, Sophie gets angry and then goes outside to calm herself down. When she comes back, she can solve the problem. I loved this idea about kids finding different strategies to calm themselves down (although in s school setting, running outside and climbing trees may not be a good option!) Here's a little book talk about it. Self regulation has been a big thing we've been teaching about in our school, so I hope these will help you too!