ANOTHER PERFECT DAY

Putting an even dizzier spin on familiar daily routines than Rod Clement did in his classic Just Another Ordinary Day (1997), New Yorker cartoonist MacDonald follows a mighty-thewed gent who energetically rises in the morning, shoots himself out of a circus cannon into a business suit, dives off a high platform into a tub of cereal, then roars off in a racing plane to his job as an ice cream taster. The spitting image of Superman in the 1940s-style retro illustrations, this heroic figure turns suddenly heroically silly when his natty attire becomes a pink tutu and clown shoes, and he finds himself fleeing an angry mob on a tiny tricycle. “What happened to my perfect day?” he wonders. A pajama-clad young observer tells him that it’s all a dream—as indeed it turns out to be. But he must attack the task of waking up in a more quiet, reflective way, thinking of “the sound of birds . . . the smell of breakfast being made . . .” And, of course, the ending is obvious. Still, children will roar at the droll swerves that fill this broad, hilarious episode. (Picture book. 6-8)