Oh, What a Busy Day

A gorgeous book filled with wonder and beauty! Yes, there is a creepy story about children dying in the woods (picture included). If you can encourage your little one to skip over that page, the rest of the book is an absolute delight!

I vividly remember the imaginative illustrations of Gyo Fujikawa from childhood. This book is visually a candy shop... filled with wonderful detail and vivid colors, the pictures themselves tell a story. I never had this exact Fujikawa book as a child, and perhaps there was a reason for it. The stories are decent. They definitely are taking the backseat to the illustration. Beginning in the morning and ending in the evening, this book takes you through an entire day. A very busy day! From eating breakfast to playing outside (then getting rained out) to playing inside (and playing pretend) to helping others (acts of service... helping an old lady). Whew! It's exhausting! I can relate as a mom of two small kids.I love that this book can be read in parts without losing a sense of story, which is nice when you want to just read a few verses and then let the kids sit with the book and pour over the pictures. Every page has it's own tale loosely connected to the previous page. Some are wonderful, others are perplexing. There's one section in the middle of the book where I actually laughed out loud. It begins with "It's Very Sad", 2 pages of things that are sad such as when puppy is sick, or when dolly (I'm assuming porcelain) breaks her head. The next two pages are prefaced by "And here is a very, very sad story" where it should say something more like: "and here is a very, very disturbing story". The story is titled "The Babes In The Wood" and tells of two little children who were kidnapped and abandoned in the woods. Eventually they grow weary and sob, and bitterly cry... and die. Well, I'm sure my son would LOVE that story like I love the mystery of CSI. Sure, it's a fact of life... awful things do happen. Very very sad things. And very very happy things, too. My instinct is to not give my children new material for their nightmares. But perhaps we have become too sensitive to sad stories like this that were acceptable in books in the 1970's? And maybe we shouldn't be. I still haven't decided what to do about this story in the middle of this wonderful book. :) So far we've just skipped it.The "sad" section is followed by an "it's okay" section. For example: "It's okay if your naughty and mischievous and mean-- sometimes... But later" basically it's okay as long as you say sorry. But this section is also filled with gems along the lines of: it's okay if you have a bad day, or a bad dream, or hurt feelings, or you're shy. We're human! I LOVE this. I love that I can read this to my kids. :)Overall this book is a dream! From the happiest of times: up high in the shelter of a fantastic tree house on a rainy afternoon, To the saddest of times: being stolen away from your parents and dying alone in the woods. And everything in between!!

Oh! What a wonderful book!!!My younger sister and I used to read this book over and over and over again when we were little. It was our dream to be able to live in the pages that Gyo Fujikawa created. We would sit for hours and discuss what page we would like to live in most, what we would do if we got to live there and how much fun it would be. My sister's favorite page (if I remember correctly) was the mud puddle page. Mine switched between the tree house and the wild animal page. I loved the tree house page. Who hasn't always wanted a tree house? A secret hideaway to run away from real life and play? But I had hard time choosing between that and the 2nd to last page -- the wild animal page. On that page the children are hanging out with all different types of animals. My sister and I would pore over that page and discus which animal we would like for our pet and why. I usually chose the mountain lion as it reminded me of our cat, Tigger -- just a lot bigger. But sometimes I would choose the bear. Who wouldn't want a bear to snuggle up to at night?I loved learning all of the little rhymes and stories that were sprinkled throughout the book. It's where I learned my favorite thing to scream when I was little: "I scream. You scream. We all scream for ice cream!" We all thought that was hysterical.I have the older copy (the original) of this book. But I bought this newer version for a gift. The pages are just the same and so is the story. Only the cover changed. It's still my favorite book from childhood. Enjoy!!!

As a child who remembers Gyo's books and loved her illustrations, and, now as a mother, this is a decent reprint. Not as vivid or crisp as the printing job of the older copies (which is a little sad) but still decent. Rereading this book from the perspective of a mother I did reword or eliminate several things from the book before reading it to my child:1. Babes in the Woods - has lovely illustrations with a morbid story. I chose to reword the rhyme in order to keep the illustration. However I would never read this story to my child as is.2. Susie's Secrets - encourages keeping secrets. As a parent that wants create and encourage open lines of communication. I eliminated those lines from the book as well.3. It's Okay - essentially this section basically says it's okay to be mean, unkind or have a bad attitude if you are sorry later. Again, not traits that I wish to encourage in my child as the message isn't one of remorse but rather seems to use "sorry" as a simple fix to bad behavior. I eliminated/reworked much of the text from this section as well.If these three sections had different verbiage this book would be much improved.

I was given this book at two years old in 1978. It was my favorite book and my Mum tells me I'd spend hours looking at it.The illustrations are simply beautiful and I love the way the children are of different ethnicity's which for back in the early 70's was quite a rare thing to see.I purchased another one from amazon for my own little girl and she too loves it!For me this is just the best children's book. Full of detail, colour and things to stimulate the imagination.

This is a wonderful bookWe used to read it to our children 25 years ago and now I bought it again to read to our granddaughterThe book came this morning and it instantly brought back so many fond memoriesI was listed as a used book but in my opinion it has never been open so top marks for the sellerMany thanksGrev in the UK

Such beautiful illustrations

We've had the original book since 1983 and its very worn and sticky taped together. So glad to find it still published. This is a great book for little ones. My grandaughter 3yr loves it

Made a reasonable prize for my Primary School poetry competition.