The Happy Day is a 1949 picture book written by Ruth Krauss and illustrated by Marc Simont. Both of these creators had long lives–Krauss died at 91, Simont at 97–and long, varied careers. These careers were both important in themselves and intersected with other kidlit creators. For example, Krauss was married to Crockett Johnson (of Harold and the Purple Crayon fame), and 8 of her books were illustrated by Maurice Sendak. Simont illustrated almost 100 books, including titles by James Thurber and Margaret Wise Brown.
So…The Happy Day. This book moves at a meditative pace. It’s a slow book about a snowy day where various animals (squirrels, ground hogs, bears, mice) sleep. The snow makes the black and white of the illustrations logical: this is a world covered with, and whited out by, snow.
Then the sleeping animals smell something. It wakes them up, and they leave their warm beds to follow the smell, first slowly and in relative isolation, then running in large packs (and leaving tracks behind them in the snow). They travel, gather, stop, and celebrate.
Eventually, they find the only splash of color in the book, a yellow flower. All the animals meet this with faces of joy and the collective cry “Oh! A flower is growing in the snow.”
And that’s it. The day is happy because there’s a flower growing in the snow, and all the animals smelled it when dead asleep and gathered to see its brightness. This is a poem of simplicity and celebration, something Saint Francis might have composed.
This book was a 1950 Caldecott Honor book.
