A Letter From Your Teacher On the Last Day of School

Shannon Olsen, who also wrote and illustrated Our Class is a Family, frames this picture book as a single long letter from a teacher to her class on the last day of school, built as the second half of a pair with A Letter From Your Teacher: On the First Day of School. Meant to be read aloud, the letter walks the class back through the year, the memories made and the connections formed, before saying goodbye. At 102 pages and pitched to ages 5 to 6, it gives the letter format room to actually feel like a letter rather than a page or two of farewell.

Ending a school year is a strange, mixed feeling for a five- or six-year-old, excited for summer, sad to leave a teacher and classroom that became familiar, and this book gives that feeling somewhere to land instead of rushing past it. Because the letter speaks directly to the class, it works well read aloud on an actual last day, turning a classroom transition into a shared moment rather than just an announcement that school's out. A natural pick for a teacher closing out the year, or a parent whose child is having a harder time saying goodbye to this classroom than expected.