My Spanish is rusty, but I picked up Un dia muy normal because it was the first book by Mark Jannsen my library had available–and I’m glad I did.
I had heard good things about Jannsen as an artist/illustrator, and working through this 2019 translation of his 2016 picture book Niets gebeurd (publishing in English in 2017 as Nothing Happened) nudged my attention to focus on the images over the words.
I didn’t really need the nudge–the images are huge, colorful, and luminous–but it helped me focus there.
The idea behind the book is simple. It’s evening, and two kids are talking about how basic their days were. They didn’t do much–just normal stuff. Except that all the normal things they did were done in or near amazing creatures and locations. For example, Nick “did a handstand” and “went for a swim”…except the handstand was on a tiger’s head, balanced between his ears, and the swim was amidst a school of multicolored fish and near a whale. Sarah, the other kid, does similarly common things, in similarly fantastic locations, and, I must underscore, in almost overwhelming imagery. The kids are presented as tiny, and the lions and elephants as huge.
I strongly recommend this book in any language, and the bright colors would work for the kids who can’t yet read too.
I’ll be looking up more Janssen, who has, I recently learned, illustrated hundreds of books. He was also longlisted for the 2026 World Illustration Awards.
You can find an interview with Janssen here.
