Lilly's Big Day

Henkes, K. (2006). Lilly’s big day. New York, NY: Greenwillow Books.

When Lilly’s teacher Mr. Slinger announces to his class that he will soon marry the school nurse, Ms. Shotwell, Lilly excitedly assumes she’ll be the flower girl.  Her dreams are dashed when Mr. Slinger informs her that his niece Ginger will be taking on that job, but, to make her feel better, he asks Lilly if she’d be willing to act as Ginger’s assistant.  Lilly somewhat reluctantly agrees.  At the wedding, an interesting turn of events occurs that places Lilly in an important role, but you’ll just have to read Lilly’s Big Day to find out what happens!

Henkes provides a writing style that is easy to read but not “dumbed down,” using words that might be familiar to early elementary school students.   He uses simple dialogue and parallel structure to draw his readers in whether they’re reading aloud or silently.  As a high school teacher, I don’t really know how much I could actually use this book in my classroom (my kids might be a tad insulted at first), but I might be able to use it to teach parallel structure – how to write it and to illustrate why it’s effective for readers of all ages.    

Complementing the text are the charming, cartoon-style watercolor and black pen illustrations for Lilly’s Big Day that are the creation of author Kevin Henkes.  As is the case with the definition of picture books, the illustrations do more than just reiterate the events of the plot.  They add to the plot of the story and flesh out the mouse characters through clever facial expressions, colorful settings, and additional dialogue within the pictures.  Some of my favorite moments occur when an unnamed little boy mouse in Lilly’s class reacts with, “Yuck!” when Mr. Slinger announces his engagement then remarks in a later illustration, “I’m never getting married.”  It’s little details like this that made this book so enjoyable to read.       

I have no children of my own and, as mentioned above, I teach high school, but, when I told my sisters-in-law that I was taking a course in Children’s and Young Adult Literature, they asked that I keep an eye out for books that they could share with their kids, my nieces and nephews.  In my selections of books, then, I have been on the lookout not only for young adult literature for my students but also for excellent children’s book ideas for them.  To be honest, the primary reason I chose to read this particular book is that it was mentioned in our text for the course and was one of several others listed by the same author and it fit the age-group of a few of my nieces and nephews.  I figured that, if this author had written so many books that had been recommended by people who know great children’s literature, he must be excellent!  I certainly was not disappointed, and I will most definitely share this book with the moms in my family for all the reasons above, but also because of its valuable themes of friendship, support, and understanding and grace when things don’t quite go your way.  Also, I wanted to read several books by the same author so that I could compare his style across different texts, as recommended on our course syllabus.  My next blog post will actually deal with another one of Kevin Henkes’s books.

BIG QUESTION for the little ones: When in your life have you had an experience that someone else got to do something that you wanted to do?  How did you handle it?  After reading Lilly’s Big Day, how might you handle it differently?

BIG QUESTION for older students: How do the illustrations add to the plot and characterization in Lilly’s Big Day?