The LAST Day of Kindergarten turns 15!

Time sure does fly. The Last Day of Kindergarten is 15 this year! I’m grateful this book has been around so long and thought it would be fun to take a look back at the journey.
 
My daughter provided the inspiration for Last Day way back in 2003. ​Helena loved kindergarten and didn’t want to let it go. After the graduation ceremony, most kids seemed happy, but she was crying. She realized that growing up meant leaving things behind.

​I comforted my dramatic daughter as best I could, but the experience got me thinking. There were lots of books to help children prepare for the first day of kindergarten. But what about the last day? For many kids, this day was confusing. It brought excitement and pride, but also a sense of loss.

A day or two later, I brought Helena and two neighborhood friends to Chuck E. Cheese in Burnsville (MN).  While the girls ran around, playing all the games and collecting long streams of tickets, I sat in a booth with my notebook and jotted down my initial ideas. (Here is visible proof of my writing motto: "Make a mess and clean it up.")

The original story took place in the narrator’s home on the day before the last day of kindergarten. The narrator’s parents and older brother helped her deal with her mixed feelings about graduation. An editor from Marshall Cavendish expressed interest in the manuscript, but she wanted the entire story to take place in school. I didn't resist; I recognized that this approach would make the book more universal. The heart of the book remained the same. I did some tweaking, and Marshall Cavendish offered me a contract. 

Sachiko Yoshikawa was chosen as the illustrator. I felt lucky. There was a sweet, playful quality in her work that was a good match with the text. I later learned that she based the illustrations on her own daughter's kindergarten experience in San Francisco. 

​Publishing is often a stop-and-start business, and this entire book-making process took place over a number of years. By the time The Last Day of Kindergarten was released in the spring of 2011, my daughter was in eighth grade--and not the least bit sad when those last days of school rolled around.

The first year Last Day was out, I presented the book to eight local kindergarten classes in one day. EIGHT. And I didn't just read the book. I helped the students in each classroom come up with their own graduation stories. What an absolute blur that day was! 

I also spoke to two kindergarten classes at my hometown library in Mt. Lake and had the great privilege of sharing Last Day with my very own kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Peters. 

​I created activities to go with the book and put them on my website. Some are simple: making a graduation announcement and diploma, playing "Pomp and Circumstance." Others are more involved. Be a Memory Keeper offers a number of prompts to get kids reflecting on their year, as well as different ways they can express their thoughts.  Write Your Own Graduation Story provides kids with the basic structure of Last Day and gives them space to put in the special details from their own lives. Make Your Own Graduation Cap shows kids how to make a "funny flat hat."

Shortly after the book came out, Marshall Cavendish was sold to Two Lions, the children’s publishing branch of Amazon. This was concerning. It meant that the book would have little or no presence in brick-and-mortar stores. (What bookstore would promote books published by its biggest competitor?) I’ve often felt disappointed that Last Day never had a place among bookstore graduation displays in the spring. But I know I've been lucky in other ways.
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In 2012, one cold night at the end of January, I received an email that warmed me up considerably: Last Day was a Minnesota Book Award finalist! Here I am at the Loft in Minneapolis at a related event. When I present the book to kids, I have them do motions to go along with the text. It was great fun to make an audience of adults do the motions with me. We're all just big kids, after all.

2012 MN Book Awards: in good company with Laura Purdie Salas, Joyce Sidman, and Catherine Thimmesh. (Laura took home the prize for Bookspeak! Poems about Books.)

Also in 2012, Last Day came out as a Scholastic paperback and was a bestseller for the month of May. Those flyers were always floating around my house when my kids were growing up—and when I was growing up as well. My bookshelves still hold Scholastic titles from decades ago. Knowing my book is part of this tradition is really, really cool. 

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​One especially meaningful Last Day event was the Kindergarten Association Conference in 2012. Along with four other writers, I sold books at a table sponsored by the Children’s Literature Network. That’s where I met Karen Henry Clark, author of Sweet Moon Baby and, more recently, Library Girl (a picture book about the renowned librarian Nancy Pearl). We struck up a friendship that day that has meant the world to me. 

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​In 2017, Last Day came out in Mandarin . I still marvel at the thought that children on the other side of the world are reading the story that got its start in my own home.

​Last year I worked with an SAT student who had lived in Hohhot, China, when she was in fourth grade. She actually knew Mandarin and had self-published a book of interviews she conducted with the people she met in China that year. Author to author, we exchanged signed copies of our books! 

As the years have gone by, I’ve shared Last Day with many classrooms. I’ve mailed books to friends who want them for their grandkids. My mom keeps copies on hand to give to the graduating kindergartners in her church.

​During the Covid pandemic, a first-year kindergarten teacher in Texas contacted me through my Facebook author page. She had raised the funds to give every child in her classroom their own copy of Last Day. She gave me the names of her students and asked me to send signed bookplates. When that surreal school year came to an end, she drove to every student’s home and personally delivered the books. I'm sure those kids will never forget her devotion to them.

​This same teacher contacted me recently and asked for signed bookplates for her kindergarten class of 2026. I'm happy to think that my book will be part of their celebration.  ​

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There's a good chance that Last Day won’t be in print too much longer. I think that’s why I feel the need to write this piece: like the narrator in my story, I’m preparing to say goodbye.
 
I will share one last memory, one that makes me smile every time I think of it.
 
I’ve lost track of the specifics, but I know this event took place in a school in western Minnesota in the spring of 2013 or 2014. Both of those years I was “on tour” as a visiting author with the Southwest-West Central Service Cooperative. For a few very intense days, I did little else but give presentations, prepare to give presentations, and drive long miles on rural highways. At one session, I was sharing Last Day with a group of students that included kindergarteners as well as first graders. I came to these lines:
 
      I’m reciting our ABC farewell poem without making any mistakes.
      I’m singing “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” and clapping in all the right places.

—and every last one of those kids burst into song!
 
They sang “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” and clapped in all the right places.
 
A teacher explained that this was one of the songs in their winter concert, which had been delayed a whole month because of untimely snowstorms. They had practiced and practiced and practiced. These kids owned “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.”
 
You should see the smile on my face right now.