Best Worst Day Ever

“Sometimes the world works in mysterious ways,Especially when you’re having one of those days.And what else to do when your mood starts to harden,Then run away from home to the bottom of the garden.And once all is calm and ready to go home,In place of the garden, a forest has grown.Through the forest you encounter a bear,Stomping his feet with a dancing flair.An elephant is next tooting his trunk,Followed by a lion singing out of his funk.And before you know it, you arrive at your back door,And you can’t even remember what you ran away for!”Arthur is having an awful day – nothing is going the way it should . So obviously there is only one natural thing to do: run away to the bottom of the garden.He packs his suitcase and stomps and huffs and puffs down to the bottom of the garden – good plan!Naturally after a few hours he’s hungry and wondering just how much everyone is probably missing him. He gets up to trudge back to the house but instead of the garden there has grown a giant forest instead.In true Michael Rosen style, he can’t go over it, and he can’t go under it… he’ll have to go through it.During his journey back to the house, he encounters a bear whose stomping quickly turns into dance moves! He meets an elephant whose huffing and puffing soon turns into hooting and tooting. Finally he meets a lion, whose roar soon becomes a good old singalong.Arriving at his back door, he worries that his family might be mad but naturally they are just pleased to see him and Arthur’s best worst day ever finishes with a well deserved sleep.This book took me back! I was about 5 years old and I was incensed. Can’t for the life of me remember why I was so angry. Probably lost one of my ‘Monsters in my pocket’ or my older brother sat in the only single armchair in the living room that we both raced home to be the one to sit in. So naturally as a sane and capable 5 year old I decided to teach everyone a lesson and run away! I went slightly further than the end of the garden, I ran around the corner and sat on the kerb of a busy main road outside the newsagent. Again, naturally, my mum exploded when she finally realised what I’d done.So you see, I completely empathise with Arthur and I loved how this story represented those irrational lessons we think we’re teaching everyone when in fact we only make ourselves look silly.Part adventure, I loved how the characters he meets in the forest transform his angry behaviour into joyful actions. The physical manifestation of turning his frown upside down! The little tweaks of turning his stomping into dancing, his huffing and puffing into hooting and tooting and his roar into singing is a clever way to symbolise the red mist lifting. It’s also a great illustrator of the power of positivity and how positive actions breed positive thoughts.Wonderfully colourful illustrations fill every page in such a symbolic way as the dark trees of the dark forest become brighter and more colourful, the more positive encounters he has, so by the end, the forest is alive with reds, pinks, yellows and blues.With my Teacher hat on, this would be a great stimulus to discuss anger and moods and the foolishness of running away. You could also explore the power of positivity and well being activities, but also the power of friendship and how often its other people who can help us out of our funk ( or a hooting tooting elephant perhaps?).A wonderfully cute adventure perfect for early years and grown adults who want to reminisce about that time they ran away!

What a beautiful book! 😍I read it with my 6yo - and then my 11yo read it to herself because she was drawn in by the pictures. They are really very good, and both girls picked up on the inclusion of the 'helpers' in the final picture - "oh look - he gets to sleep with his lion guarding him all night long!"I loved the way that Sophy gently teaches an alternative way to deal with the big BAD DAY feelings. The only possible negative is that she does this very quickly - which is, realistically, the correct speed for her target audience.Whilst we were reading, my 6yo looked like she was thinking hard; later, she asked me "HOW did he do that? How did he go from stomping to dancing?" Maybe a second read through - with both (all) of us acting it out - will help with this. Either way, it'll be fun to act it out!Overall, this is a brilliant and beautiful book, and the 11yo and I both gave it 5/5. 😁😘The 6yo said "Only three stars because it doesn't tell me how to do it; people keep telling me to try it at school but no one says how you go from stomping and hitting to dancing and waving..." 🤔Maybe there's a niche there to fill!