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Review: A Day at the Beach

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A Day at the Beach
Written by Gary Schmidt and Ron Koertge
New York: Clarion Books, 2025. Fiction. 213 pages

A single day at the beach brings together a diverse cast of children as they each spend the day at a beach in New Jersey. Told through multiple points of view, each chapter highlights a different young person as they spend time at the beach with their families or by themselves, intersecting with other children’s stories in at times hilarious ways. One boy loses his brand-new phone in the sand, a large family decorate the beach with bright pink umbrellas and put on a circus performance, a girl helps a dog find his person using the magic of imagination, another dog finds a new home, a boy talks to a maybe run-away-bride, and each story is told in a vibrant and hilarious way to showcase what could happen on the beach in a single day.

While we are far from the ocean and don’t have beaches with crashing waves, this book isn’t any less relatable as summer has officially hit. With the changing points of view and each chapter focusing on one or two kids, A Day at the Beach gives the perspective of many different types of people with different backgrounds and family dynamics. Each child’s story is as important as the next. This book reminds us that while everyone around us may live a life that might look different than ours, we all enjoy the same things, like spending the day outside and enjoying the beautiful world around us, like spending a day at the beach.
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