All in a Day, by Chynthia Rylant and illustrated by Nikki McClure is a picture book about enjoying the gifts that a day can bring.
The book starts out, “A day is a perfect piece of time to live a life, to plant a seed.” It shows a boy gardening, a plant sprouting, and the boy being kind by sweetly feeding a chicken. One of the pages shows another boy throwing eggs, which appears to be hurtful to the boy and the chicken. But, the boy moves on and the writing says, “You can make a wish and start again. You can find your way back home.” The boy then takes a rest with his mother in a hammock. The book goes on to talk about the promise of a new day and the love it can bring, even when it rains. At the end, it states that today is the only today and it won’t come back again.
I enjoyed this book. I like that it is all about the things we can do and appreciate in the day that we have. The illustrations were simple and good. The drawings were created with black paper an exacto knife, so the outlines are in hard and black. The entire book is black and white, with blue and yellow back grounds. This book was written for K-4 and the readability is ages 4-8. I think it is nice to remind children and adults the importance of enjoying the day: planting seeds, making wishes, watching the sun go across the sky, and finding their way home.
Mini-lesson:
The students can think about the memory of a great day that they had. What types of things happened in that day? What makes that day so special? What makes any day special? They could free write about a special day in their lives.
I enjoyed the idea for the minilesson. So often, even as children, we rush through a day and don't have time to reflect about what happened. There are triumphs in every day.
ReplyDeleteit sounds like to me that ther boy is greatful for all the little things in life,. so often we overlook the little things in life as though the are unremarkable, even thought they are.
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