It's a perfect day for Cat, who loves to feel the warmth of the sun while lying in a flower bed, and for Dog, who sits in the wading pool his friend Bert filled for him, and for Chickadee and Squirrel, too, who enjoy birdseed from the feeder and a corncob on the grass. Perfect for everyone... until Bear comes along and decides to make it a perfect day for himself. He chomps on the corncob, gobbles the birdseed, gives himself a wading pool shower and rolls in the garden, scattering the other critters in his wake. "The warmth of the sun./ The cool of the water./ A belly full of corn and seed./ A flower bed for a nap." This confirms it: "It was a perfect day for Bear." The others? Not so much anymore.
In A Perfect Day, Lane Smith--Carle Honor Artist, Society of Illustrators' Lifetime Achievement award recipient and two-time Caldecott Honor winner (The Stinky Cheese Man by Jon Scieszka; Grandpa Green)--gives young readers a sweet little taste of perspective. It's natural to find oneself at the center of the world when one is a child. Bear's oblivious upheaval of everyone else's perfect day in the pursuit of his own is a gentle nudge toward recognizing others' points of view. The image of a massive and utterly serene Bear snoozing among the flowers so recently abandoned by the panicked cat juxtaposes tellingly with the final picture of boy, dog, cat, bird and squirrel huddled wide-eyed around the window. Smith's trademark textured, scratchy, mixed-media artwork is, as always, captivating; his comic storytelling: perfect. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor