By Matt Lamothe
Seven real children in seven countries, each walked through the same ordinary day — where they live, what they eat, how they get to school, where they sleep.
Seven real children — in Italy, Japan, Iran, India, Peru, Uganda, and Russia — each live through one ordinary day, and the book asks all seven the same plain questions. Where do you live? Kei is in a Tokyo apartment; Daphine is on a farm in Uganda. What's for breakfast, how do you get to school, what do you wear, what do you learn, how do you play, where do you sleep? Every child answers the same question on the same spread, so you can read straight across the row and take it in at once: seven different homes, seven children moving through the one human day. The families are real. They gave their days to the book, and their photographs are in the back.
There's no festival here, no costume, no special occasion — just a regular day, happening everywhere at once. Because all seven children answer the same questions, their differences feel ordinary: one eats porridge, another flatbread, and both are just breakfast. A child can come away seeing that another country is mostly a different answer to the same human questions, without anyone having to spell it out. If you're putting together a world-cultures shelf or unit, this is the one I'd measure the others against.