This charming picture book is an homage to imagination masquerading as a first-day-of-school story.
Martin's daydreams help him cope with a new classroom. "My name is Martin," he begins, then adds, taking in the other students, "I wonder what their names are." His teacher's hair is the same color as his cat, Happy, and her pink cheeks remind him of his Mum Mum, "[but] she doesn't have Mum Mum's big smile." The illustration depicts the boy's thought process with a spot image of Happy above the text, and a full-page illustration of Martin's teacher at the head of the classroom, with her hair sculpted to resemble the cat's ears, her eyes the same shape and shade as the feline's. The line about his Mum Mum's smile sends Martin off on a stream-of-consciousness reverie. Her "smile is as wide as the river," he thinks, and is flooded with memories of a summer's drive along the river. He tries to reel himself back: "[T]oday is the first day of school, and I'm here to learn.... No walking on the moon today." This is clearly a familiar strategy.
When his teacher spies him daydreaming, she asks, "Where are you, Martin? On the moon?" But she says it with "a smile as wide as the river." The author creates a curious hero and a classroom environment where he can flourish, and Melanson's visual mix of the literal and the symbolic is spot-on for early elementary students. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness