By Suzanne Lang
A chimp named Jim wakes up grumpy for no reason he can name, and his friends keep trying to snap him out of it.
It's a gorgeous morning in the jungle and Jim Panzee is in a foul mood, and he can't say why. His friends won't let it go. Norman the gorilla tells him to smile, the lemurs tell him to dance it off, Marabou recommends a nice long nap, and every cheerful fix just makes Jim grumpier. Finally he stomps off, and once he's had enough he says it out loud: he's grumpy, and that's how he feels today. Norman, who hasn't pushed like the others, tells him that's perfectly fine. It's funny start to finish. Nobody snaps Jim out of it, and the book doesn't try to either.
This is about as gentle as a book about bad moods gets. Jim is grumpy for no reason, everyone tells him to cheer up, and none of it works, which is a spot a lot of children have been in. What I like is that the book never treats Jim's mood as a problem to solve. Norman's line does the quiet work: it's okay to feel that way. And it's funny enough that none of it plays like a lesson, so it sits well as the easy first book on this shelf. Not much to think hard about, plenty to laugh at.