ALICIA HAS A BAD DAY

Alicia, who is normally a very happy person, tries everything she can think of to shake her terrible mood. She plays loud music and dances very fast. She stands on her head, steps on anthills in the woods, and writes her favorite miserable word, ``lugubrious,'' in her notebook. But all to no avail. Outside, it starts to rain, ants bite her cheeks, and she falls into a mud puddle. ``I am miserable!'' she shouts, as loud as she can, before crawling under her bed. There, her dog Neptune licks her face, and when they go outside together, ``the world is a little less lugubrious.'' A story about how the smallest gesture can turn a rotten day into one that's not quite so bad from this first time author-illustrator. The zany illustrations (Alicia is a mop-top grump with Philip Johnson glasses and a permanently appalled expression) suit the amusingly outraged tone of the text. Funny and original. (Fiction/Picture book. 4-8)