Friendly Day - Softcover

"Vivacious illustrations carry this unlikely tale of a captured mouse's ploy that inspires three predatory animals to wage peace.

When Cat nabs Mouse by the tail, the quick-thinking rodent immediately tells him it's Friendly Day: 'a day for sharing, a day for caring, / when everyone is nice, // when Frog reads Snail a fairy tale / and cats do NOT eat mice.' So eloquent is the mouse that the dazzled feline marches off to persuade Dog and a less credulous but tenderhearted Bear to join paws and set out to make the holiday a real one. Expanding the central cast into a burgeoning gallery of wild creatures from all over, Fuge illustrates Kelly's bouncy rhymes with a series of harmonious gatherings. These range from the aforementioned frog and snail to a tiger lounging familiarly against a (knitting) rhino, a fox serenading dancing geese, baboons handing out balloons and a cow pouring medicine for a bedridden crocodile. All are expressively posed and rendered in sharp detail (with occasional anthropomorphic tweaks) and with fond smiles.

'It is a lovely thought, ' opines Bear, 'to think that we could ever be, / as kindly as we ought." Impossible to disagree."
--Kirkus Reviews, August 2013

Children will laugh out loud at this amusing story of a clever mouse who tricks a hungry cat into sparing his life by telling the cat that it's Friendly Day...the one day in the year when all animals must share, care, and be nice to one another. Bright illustrations and sparkling rhyme follow suit as the cat imagines all the world's animals getting along--from a rhino who knits kitten mittens to a shark having a friendly game of chess with a school of fish.