Skip to main content

A Perfect Day

Image
By


A Perfect Day 
Lane Smith
Roaring Brook Press, 2016.

Do you ever have some of those authors that you think “I basically just love everything that he/she does!”? So Lane Smith is one of those authors for me. I love so many of his books: Kid Sherriff and the Terrible Toads; John, Paul, George & Ben; and the illustrated Penguin Problems are just a few books that I LOVE dearly. So, when this next book was published I had high expectations (don’t we all when it is a new book from a loved author?). Well, let me just tell you—I loved this book. It made me laugh out loud. And let me tell you why.

So this book tells about the perfect day of some of the animals around one little house. The cat has a perfect day because Cat likes to be in the flower bed. The dog has a perfect day since a kind owner filled a kiddie pool full of water. A bird and a squirrel have a perfect day since the same kind human put out food for them. Then—suddenly—life isn’t quite so perfect for those animals. A bear decides to take over the yard. However, it turns out to be a perfect day—for the bear!

I love the story. I love that it makes me chuckle at the end. I also love the illustrations. They are a mixture of a couple of things. There are bits like the leaves and the details that almost look like texturized stamps or cut paper. Then there are bits like the animals that look like paint that has been texturized (think brush strokes) to make the animals feel more alive and expressive. Then there are the bits like the human and the house that are mostly thin outlines—which works since those bits are less important to the story of the animals and their day. Seriously, the textures of all the illustrations add such depth and detail to the story that it makes it all the better.

Yeah. This is another good book Mr. Smith. I think I will remain a fangirl of yours. Just please excuse me while I go and read more of your books again while I wait for your next happy work to be published…
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stand Tall by Joan Bauer

By DeeDee
Stand Tall By Siena Siegel by Joan Bauer Putnam, 2002, 182 pgs Realistic Fiction Tree is 12 years old and over 6 feet tall. That would be great if he were a basketball player, but he is not. Dealing with his unusual size is not Tree's only challenge. Tree's parents have recently gone through a divorce, and his grandfather has had his leg amputated as the result of an old Vietnam War injury. The strength of this book is the characterizations. All of the main characters are dimensional and sympathetic. Bauer sets the characters in real and often funny family situations. Best of all is the character of Tree. He is boy with a heart to match his stature. This is a great book for boys or girls ages 9-12, as a read aloud or for individual reading. This book could also be a good Rx book for children whose families are going through divorce, or for anyone who feels like they don't fit in.
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Cincinnati Lee, Curse Breaker

By
  Cincinnati Lee, Curse Breaker By Heidi Heilig New York: Greenwillow Books, 2025. Fiction. 291 pages. Thanks to Cincinnati Lee's no good, dirty rotten, artifact stealing great great great grandfather, Cincinnati's family is now cursed and Cincinnati feels like it's up to her to break the curse. Which involves trying to steal the artifacts back from museums that her grandfather robbed from graves and archeological sites around the world and return them to their countries of origin. But when Cincinnati's first artifact stealing mission goes awry, she decides it might be more effective to steal an all-powerful artifact herself that she can use to break the curse - The Spear of Destiny. Unfortunately her race for the spear will pit her against art smugglers and thieves intent on finding the ancient artifact themselves. If you are looking for an Indiana Jones read-alike, this is the perfect for you! Heavy on the adventure with similar levels of mysticism to those seen in th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more