Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson

This is a story that plays itself out in our schools year after year. “Class, we have a new student today.” How Maya fits in depends so much on everyone else. In this softly told and illustrated story the new girl is left out, laughed at, and mocked.

One day her seat is empty. The teacher invites the children to consider how a small pebble dropped into a bowl of water creates a continuous ripple outward. “This is what kindness does,” says Ms. Alberts. “Even small things count.” But the new girl does not come back to school again. And with each passing day the chance of showing kindness to her becomes “more and more forever gone.”

If just one child reads Each Kindness and sees an opportunity to pass on a ripple of kindness to another child who needs it, this story will have been well worth it. (Nancy Paulsen Books)