SMILE! Click!

Oh, yes...it's a day unlike any other.  It's a day filled with distractions in the classroom.  It's a day of long waits in line and the wearing of dress-up, sometimes uncomfortable, clothing.  For parents it's remembering to fill out the form, including the proper amount of money and hoping this will be THE year.  Truth be told, for teachers, it's a day unlike any other, filled with distractions in the classroom, long waits in line and students fidgeting in clothing they don't normally wear BUT it's also a day filled with interesting insights and unexpected surprises.

Neat and clean, wearing their favorite shirt, maybe even a tie, pants, blouse, skirt or dress, boys and girls arrive ready to rock school picture day. At least one hundred times they've been told to sit up straight and smile, but be natural and relax at the same time.  They, of course, are wondering at the improbability of those things occurring together.  Picture Day Perfection (Abrams Books for Young Readers) written by Deborah Diesen with illustrations by Dan Santat follows the singular efforts of one boy to achieve greatness on this very important annual occurrence.

I'd planned for months. 
This was going to be the year
of the perfect school picture.

But some days, not everything goes 
according to plan.

 It happens to all of us, despite the precautions taken the night before and our best efforts to sleep soundly without tossing and turning.  We wake up, look in the mirror and see the dreaded bedhead.  Well, perhaps a favorite article of clothing will compensate for the overabundance of unruly hair.  It's not looking exactly tidy from being in the dirty clothes basket but it will have to do.

Now it's on to a pancake kind of breakfast.  Yikes!  It's a maple syrup eruption!  The bus ride to school is less than stellar.  What's that?   The background box checked on the form just so happens to be the same color as that favorite shirt?!  At the moment this is looking like the farthest thing from a perfect kind of school picture day.  It's like this dude has been zapped by the Master of Disaster

Trouble is following this boy around like a shadow, even when practicing smiling.  Paint seems to go everywhere but on his project in Art.  When it's finally time for the picture taking, hearing the photographer say "Cheese" umpteen times, makes his stomach churn and gurgle.

Yes! Oh no! Yes! There's always next year.


Deborah Diesen knows how to build a story sentence by sentence.  With a practiced preciseness she gives each calamity a little more comedy than the one before by placing emphasis on certain words, words added to create exaggerated drama.  We readers turn the pages in anticipation,  wondering what new mishap will befall our protagonist, when the first unexpected twist is thrown our way, quickly followed by another.  Readers won't know whether to laugh at themselves or the guy who has plotted and prepared for 365 days.  Here's a sample, which is great to read to yourself but even better read aloud.

Then it took me quite some time to unearth my favorite shirt.
I finally found it at the very bottom of the hamper.

You might call it "stained."
You might call it "wrinkled."
You might even call it "smelly."
You wouldn't be wrong.


Taking the picture options, the mixture of sizes you get in a typical school picture package, illustrator Dan Santat divides them up, placing the largest on the front jacket, sets of the two smaller choices on the back jacket.  For each of the eleven images the boy's face assumes a different expression, each one more hilarious than the other.  (You have to wonder who the model was for these.)  The front and back cover highlight illustrations from within the story.  Opening and closing endpapers mirror a single and two partial rows of pictures like in a yearbook, leaving an empty frame in the back for your personal photograph.  All the guys and gals are sporting their own unique grins.

Prior to the title pages we are given a hint, Santat style, of possibilities in the narrative; a red, hand-drawn smiley face wearing a mischievous look.  This particular drawing does appear several more times in the book.  Each set of double pages zooms in on an entire image, a group of smaller images opposite a single picture, or large close-ups over fainter elements in the background.  The photographic theme is found in the attention to details; the eyes, nose and grin formed on the pancake stack with fruit, butter and bacon, four-printed snapshots of bedhead, student pictures as slides, publication and pricing information on a photographer's background with camera equipment placed nearby.

The bright, bold colors and definitive lines of these illustrations rendered in Adobe Photoshop, bring the text to life with the same energy as the main character's unfortunate moments throughout the day.  No one portrays humor exactly like Dan Santat does;  the looks on the boy's face alone are enough to have readers exploding with laughter.  From covered in syrup, to walking dismally down the hallway, to the shock of blending into the background, to goofy grin, painted splattered and rascal supreme, we see a person brimming with personality.  It seems pretty perfect to me.


Without a doubt you are going to want to have a copy of Picture Day Perfection written by Deborah Diesen with illustrations by Dan Santat in your personal, classroom or school library.  This team has depicted the misadventures of a boy bent on bringing a bold plan to fruition with the sure knowledge of firsthand experience. I know you will be hearing "read it again" over and over.

If you want to discover more about the work of either Deborah Diesen or Dan Santat follow the links embedded in their names above to access their websites.  Enjoy the book trailer below.

Grump For A Day

For whatever reason, there are those mornings when your eyes first open and you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, it's going to be a bad day.  Little things that would normally not bother you in the slightest add up, then multiply; things like not being able to squeeze more than a smidge out of the toothpaste tube, realizing you're going to have to use orange juice on your cereal because the date on the milk carton has expired or glancing at the gauge on your car hoping the fumes will get you to the nearest gas station.  What makes it go from bad to worse are the cheerful people who respond with phrases like, "Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed", "Put on a happy face" or "It could always be worse".

The younger you are, the more this matters.  Frustrations build until you feel something growing inside you.  It's...it's...it's a monster!  It might even be Crankenstein (Little, Brown and Company) written by Samantha Berger with illustrations by Dan Santat.

Have you seen Crankenstein?
Oh, you would totally
know if you had.

There is no mistaking being in the presence of this small human whose outlook on life has gone astray.  No siree!  For every spoken word, every incident, his stony stare will make the blood run cold in your veins.

A happy greeting, question or timely reminder will be met with a loud MEHHRRRR!  Even his reflection in a rainy puddle will give you the shivers.  You had better be careful when he comes calling at your house on Halloween especially if it's a bit chilly outside.

Woe to anyone near him when his Popsicle melts too quickly on a hot summer day, when he has been waiting in a long, long line or when he has to swallow icky-tasting cough syrup.  And it might be a good time to draw straws to see who gets to tell him it's bedtime.  By now you are beginning to wonder if the monster is stronger than the little boy.

Is there no cure for this crabby creature?  Is there any hope whatsoever?  What's that you say?  There are two of them?  This could be double the trouble or...the best thing of all...the sound of children's laughter.


Without a doubt Samantha Berger comprehends being a grump.  She also knows how hard it is not to laugh around someone who is grouchy, no matter how you are feeling.  In this title the questions posed, the situations described, are the very things to incite and increase a case of the crankies.  The tempo of the telling and the clever conclusion, are both gifts to her readers.  You can't wait to discover what happens next.


There are a select few illustrators when I see their names, I know I'm going to be chuckling at least once, if not throughout the entire book.  One of these is Dan Santat.  He has a knack for knowing which facial expressions, body postures, and details will ignite laughter in his intended audience no matter their age.

The jacket of Crankenstein explodes with pure, bold colorful emotion as little "Crankie" looks straight out at the reader with pink ice cream smeared across his mouth, the scoop of ice cream fallen from the cone topping the "T".  On the back we zoom in on the scoop sitting in the middle of a shadow of a very angry young guy.  When you remove the jacket you see a cover which I double dog dare you not to burst out laughing as you read the labeled parts of Crankenstein front and back.  Lines are drawn from phrases such as

hard-to-explain mystery stain
leftover scum from piece of gun and
still has dog poo residue (P. U.!) 

to the appropriate areas.

Opening and closing endpapers capture the main character's mood; patterned gray raindrops and golden laughing suns.  Stopping to read the title verso, especially Dan Santat's comments, is a must.  For starters, all the words in this book are hand-lettered.

Double-page spreads, edge to edge, enhance and interpret every phrase.  Readers need to notice all the little extras contributing to the humor, the labels on the maple syrup and cough syrup bottles or Crankenstein waiting 40 minutes in line only to discover a surprise up ahead.  It's the Halloween illustration which is my absolute favorite.  The colors, perspective and layout are perfection; Crankenstein all decked out in his robot costume, shivering in the cold outside as a hand holds out the tiniest piece of candy in the entire bowl.


My face actually hurts from grinning and laughing so much from reading Crankenstein by Samantha Berger with illustrations by Dan Santat.  You can't read it just once; multiple readings are a given.  Expect high demand; people love to laugh especially when they can see a little bit of themselves within the pages of a book.

Stop by Samantha Berger's and Dan Santat's websites via the links embedded in their names.  Make sure you read some of the entries in Samantha Berger's blog too.  You might want to listen to PW KidsCast: A Conversation with Samantha Berger and Dan Santat.  Here's a link to the publisher's website for a peek at some of the inside of the book.

Enjoy the book trailer and the eve of book release book trailer.