Three new books use popular formats to remind students of good manners

they already know! Use the books with kids of all ages,and then let them

create their own imitation manner manuals.Your students are sure to say

thank you for a fun — and educational — classroom lesson! Yes, manners

should be taught at home, but if a teacher can help reinforce good

manners at school in a fun way, why not? Some new books can help

teachers do just that!

Mind Your Manners, Ben Bunny(Scholastic Press) is fine fun! Author and

illustrator Mavis Smith makes excellent use of the popular lift-the-flap

format. But don’t let the primary-grade format fool you. Mind Your

Manners is a great way to introduce goomanners to kids of all ages!

Students will recognize some of their manner slipups in Smith’s humorous

animal illustrations. For example, bulldog, kitten, and bunny are making

quite a mess as they greedily chow down in the book’s first scene:

Gobble, slurp, chomp! Crunch, crunch, crunch! Ben Bunny and his friends

were eating lunch.Enter friend Crow — flip the flap! — and the

mannerless trio gets a lesson in proper dining: “Don’t you know,” said

the crow, “it’s very rude to make so much noise when you chew your

food?”Before you take another bite, I’ll show you how to be polite.”

Subsequent lessons cover such dining disasters as wearing a hat at

the dinner table, not using a napkin, playing with food, taking huge

mouthfuls of food, talking with a full mouth, not saying thank you, and

getting up from the table without being excused — because