Jim overcomes self-doubt and learns to laugh at his own shortcomings in this warm, reassuring story. So What? is the newest edition in the acclaimed Welcome to the First Grade! collection. Funny, quietly sensitive, and crisply written.

Charles is the new boy in the first-grade class, and he is blind. His classmates want to be helpful. Should they protect Charles or treat him like everybody else? No one knows for sure.Then one day Danny, Charles, and Anna Maria get into trouble. Can Charles take charge and help his friends?

Although George's classmates are well aware that he is not the smartest student in the first grade, they are proud to know him when his fast action in an emergency saves an elderly friend's life.

The first grade's costume party is interrupted by the third grade bully.

When Jim's dog is killed, the other first graders experience with him his natural reactions to death.

While riding on a hot subway train in New York City, Oscar and his family meet the Island Lady and experience the sights, smells, tastes, and sounds of the Caribbean islands.