A Good Day

Henkes, K. (2007). A good day. New York, NY: Greenwillow Books.

Kevin Henkes’s delightful picture book  for very young children A Good Day follows a series of colorful animal characters (a little yellow bird, a little brown squirrel, a little orange fox, and a little white dog) and a little girl through what begins as a bad day, as defined by a string of unfortunate events, but that turns “good” when good fortune comes their way.  In contrast to Lilly’s Big Day’s slightly more complicated word choice and sentence structure and more elaborate plot, A Good Day’s large typeface and extremely simple word choice and sentence structure make the book perfect for adults to read to toddlers.   Nearly every page where text appears contains only one short sentence, and even the illustrations are drawn to contain a large depiction of each of the animals and the little girl in their uncomplicated settings.  Colors are bold, and lines are thick, but Henkes manages to capture the emotions of each moment. 

I explained in the blog below for Lilly’s Big Day why I chose these books by Kevin Henkes and found this one to be an interesting one to use as a comparison piece.  While Lilly’s Big Day had a more complex plot and matching illustrations that would work well for young elementary-age students (K-2), A Good Day was clearly written to appeal to slightly younger eyes.  Because the animals are all different colors, the book not only teaches the lesson that even the worst day can turn out to be “a good day” with a little change in perspective, but it also teaches children colors and helps them learn to decode the words that correspond with the color.  It can appeal to many ages, so I will recommend this book to my sister-in-law as one that she could read with 3 year-old.  Perhaps, her oldest daughter, a six-year-old, might even be able to read it to her little sister!  It might be a fun sister bonding experience. 

While A Good Day is a great book for young children to read and learn from, it was a tough one to think of a way that I might be able to use it in my Pre-AP Sophomore English class…maybe I could use it to demonstrate the basic simple sentence then ask students to elaborate on the sentence, adding more and more detail to make it more complex for an older audience.  Such musings lead to my BIG QUESTION…Using the illustration on the facing page as inspiration, how can you make the sentence about the little yellow bird’s misfortune more complex by adding descriptive words and phrases?