A personalised starting nursery book for the goodbye at the door

The Longest Wave Goodbye is the one we would pick. It is written for ages two to six, it is about the four seconds at the gate rather than the classroom behind it, and you add a photo of yourself as well as your child, so you are both in the pictures. Because there are two people in it, it is priced as a family story, from $16.90 for the digital edition.

Any of them. What the story is about is the goodbye and the coming back, and that is the same at a nursery door in Leeds, a daycare in Ohio or a preschool in Perth. If your child is five and starting school rather than nursery, the first-day-of-school page has the books written for that.

A week or two before the first day, as a story rather than a lesson, and then on the mornings that turn out to be hard. A book they already know is steadier on a nervous morning than a new one.

We would not promise that, and nobody honest would. What it gives a two-year-old is a version of the morning they have already seen end well, with your face in it at home time. That is something to point at, not a cure.

Six days to the UK and nine to ten inside the US from the moment you approve the book, so order at least a fortnight ahead. If the first day is sooner than that, the digital edition is ready to read the same day.