On the last day of second grade, a young boy looks back on the school year and recites a catalog of experiences that mark how things have changed from the school year’s beginning to end. By year’s end, he has new friends and he has grown apart from (and annoyed with) an old one. He’s learned about Albert Einstein, and Beezus and Ramona. He’s written a poem, drawn many pictures (“This is anger. This is happiness. This is William. This is Joseph.”), read many books, built many towers, and written his name in cursive. And he is primed with new questions to which he can’t wait to learn the answers, just as he can’t wait to accomplish even more—once he gets to third grade. Amy Schwartz has a gift for conveying a child’s view on the world. It shines in this sweet, unsentimental look at how much children can and do accomplish, inviting young readers and listeners to think about how much they, too, have changed and grown. (Ages 5–8)

When you're in the second grade, you learn new things every day.

Before Ms. Jones's class, Andrew didn't know how to spell “neighborhood,” how to subtract 348 from 411, how to write in cursive, how to read a chapter book, or how to play the xylophone.

But now that he has graduated from second grade, he knows how to do all of these things -- and more!

Every year in school is a significant building block for the next. In this book Amy Schwartz captures the magic of learning and growing during one of the most important years -- second grade.