The Night Before College

From the publisher of Natasha Wing’s long-running Night Before series comes a picture book that aims for an audience whose first day of class is more likely to involve organic chemistry than organic juice boxes. The mother-daughter team of Sones and Tramer use Clement Clarke Moore’s holiday classic to sing the praises of soon-to-be college students and send them on their way. There’s more than a little hyperbole involved (“They had aced it in preschool,/ read books by age four./ And before they turned six,/ they had joined the Peace Corps”), and the occasional dash of adult humor offsets the cute format (of the SATs: “they feared if they froze,/ and the scores they got sucked,/ the rest of their lives/ would be totally... ruined”). Dalton creates a genial, if somewhat nondescript cast of everypeople, from crowded quads filled with readers, guitar-strummers, and sunbathers to the proud family members who gather around the grill to send off the college-bound teens with a barbecue. Just the thing to tuck into a teen’s stocking (or maybe shower caddy). Ages 17–up. (Apr.)