New school. New friends. New environment. OH MY! What a scary thing for a sea dragon...... or is it?

Ernest is a green sea monster who is about to start school, but his day does not start off too well. He is a big sea dragon in a school of tinier fish. He tries to play Marco Polo, but he makes a splash to big which makes the little fish scared and run away. Ernest rushes to the playground, to swing, but he is too big and breaks it. Also, he meets the large-mouth bass, (who are portrays as the bullies) which shouted nasty things towards him as: "you're extinct", and "He's so prehistoric". Being so big, he feels out of place and something is always going wrong.

Ernest then follows his mom's advice; play nicely and use your imagination.
He reads a story to a red and blue fish, called "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish". He also sang "Old McDonald Had a Lake". Then Ernest used a little imagination and turned himself into a jungle-gym. He made his long tail a slide, his belly a jumping area, and his fins to play on. He had fun playing with the other fish.

Ernest changed from being scared and not playing nicely, to using his imagination and being nice to his friends. By Ernest doing this, he had an awesome first day at school.

The art has lots of details for children to look at. The art also has speech bubbles to draw the readers more into Ernest's underwater world. A child could look at the illustrations and tell you exactly what is going on without reading the text. ( )

Ernest is so excited for his first day of school. He introduces himself to everyone he meets, anxious to make many friends. It takes him a while to realize that building strong friendships takes a while. He goes on many adventures during his first day at school and making his way through the school. This book would be great for parents or day care workers to read to children who will shortly be attending their first day of school. It can show children that being polite and friendly isn’t so scary after all, and that you can make friends easily.

See my review on Reading Rumpus

Even sea monsters have first-day jitters. Fun twist on a familiar story. ( )

This book was a very good story about how one might go about attending there first day of school through the eyes of a sea monster named Ernest. He, just like everyone who starts school for the first time, must have some trials and tribulations during his first day. Some people treat him poorly for silly reasons, but eventually he finds a group of fish who like him and they become friends. At the end of the day he is happy and had a great day of school. ( )