Oh, What a Busy Day!

Written by: Gyo Fujikawa

First line: Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

Why you should read this book: This high interest book for small children follows a group of multicultural kids through a busy day and a busy year, illustrating hundreds of ways for kids to play, eat, make friends, learn manners, and entertain themselves in every weather condition. Mixed in with the descriptions are bits of poetry, classic nursery rhymes, other tidbits of enduring oral tradition, a normalization of communal togetherness that transcends race, a combination of the fantastic and the mundane that forms the child's inner world, and a palpable joie de vivre that seems absent from kids who spend all their free time in the company of video technologies. Just a really great long-standing work for young people.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You already know what you are going to be when you grow up.