By Marie Lamba, illustrated by Alea Marley
Clarion, 2019
Picture book, 32 pages, ages 4-7
Two friends – one glumly pessimistic and one emphatically optimistic – go outside on a winter day.
“This day is so gray,” says the pessimist.
“No, it isn’t…” says the optimist. “It’s deep soft brown, and shining blue, and silver splashes of bright yellow.”
And so they continue. One with a negative outlook, and the other pointing out that there is so much more than what she sees. And at the end of the day, the negative friend begins to see things as more than just one color.
Two friends – one glumly pessimistic and one emphatically optimistic – go outside on a winter day.
The author’s voice is natural in this dialog-only story. Her writing is rich but spare, well suited for a children’s book. However, as much as I appreciated her style and love the theme of looking beyond the obvious, I personally have a few issues with how the story is told. Whenever the pessimist makes a blanket statement, the optimist immediately jumps in with “No, it isn’t!” – the persistent contradicting feels negative to me, and a bit rude. (No doubt this is colored by my own childhood experiences, where I was very much like the optimist in the story and was repeatedly told not to contradict. While it was frustrating, it did teach me to communicate more effectively.)
In short, the story has good bones and a wonderful theme, but I feel there would be a better way to tell it.
The illustrations are exquisite – if rated only on the illustrations alone, this would be a 5-star book. The characters, color palette, textures: beautiful.
A Day so Gray by Marie Lamba receives 3.5 stars from this reviewer.