By Liz Garton Scanlon
A single quiet day in gentle rhyme, from one small shell on the beach to every child asleep at nightfall, with a steady reassurance running underneath that the little things and the big things all belong to the same world.
It's one ordinary day, and somehow the whole world seems to fit inside it. A family digs at the beach and turns up a single small shell. There's a farmers' market, a garden, a tree to climb, a hill to roll down. When a summer rainstorm blows in, everyone crowds into a little cafe, dripping and cozy, and waits it out. Then there's music, a big shared supper, and at the end every child is tucked into bed under the same wide sky. The words rhyme and roll along — 'All the world is old and new' — and Marla Frazee's pictures are full of families of every kind doing the small, everyday things families do. There isn't really a plot. It moves the way a day does, morning to night, and Frazee gives you a new family to notice on nearly every page.
If you need the day to wind down instead of ramp up, this is a good one to reach for at bedtime. Nothing goes wrong and nothing needs solving. It's just a day sliding from morning toward night, with a soft reassurance underneath that everyone belongs and everyone is loved. The rhythm is steady enough to settle a wound-up room, and a sensitive child may like that there's no danger anywhere in it. By the last pages the families are all home and asleep, which makes it an easy place to close the book and turn out the light.