by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 07, 2010

Deep on the shelves of my public library is a children's book that was first published in 1949 called "The Happy Day". Its author, Ruth Krauss, was born in 1901 - but 88 years later, she saw it published in a special "trophy edition" by HarperCollins Publishers. The book won a Caldecott Honor medal in 1950 for its soft black and white illustrations by Marc Simont. But 59 years later, I would finally get to experience the story!

Simont's illustrations are realistic - while Krauss's text gives personalities to the animals in the woods.  "Snow is falling," she writes, adding "field mice are sleeping." And Simont captures it all, leaving wide white spaces across the page to represent a snowy field while also offering a peek under the snow, where the mice curl up together in the cracks between rocks. "The bears are sleeping," Krauss continues, and Simont peeks again, into a snow-covered cave. This time he shows the top of two bears' heads - showing just their muzzles and ears - but they're both curled up in a cozy ball.

"It would be wrong to give away the secret of 'The Happy Day'," warns the book's jacket - but the book is definitely building up to something. There's little snails, sleeping in a tree trunk, as well as squirrels, and even ground hogs. On each page Simont gives a glimpse of the animals asleep in their dens.  But then halfway through the book, "they open their eyes."

The field mice start sniffing, and the bears start sniffing - and Simont's drawings give them an interested expression, like they're already clueing in to the book's surprise. Even the little snails begin sniffing in their shells, Krauss writes - and Simont illustrates this by showing their little antennas have sprung to attention. What's fun about this book is there's never just one animal - there's a whole page full of them. Soon there's lots of trees, with lots of squirrels peeking out, and lots of ground hogs, poking their heads out of holes in the ground.

And they're not just sniffing, but running out of their dens.  "The field mice run, the bears run," and "the little snails run with their shells." Squirrels and ground hogs, sniffing and running, run in lines across the snow-white pages, until finally they stop. And laugh.  And then the animals all begin dancing.

I won't give away the surprise either - but it's definitely the first sign of spring...

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