One Day by Shirley Marr illustrated by Michael Speechley

"Mayfly has not regretted a second of the 

incandescent experience that is life. 

It has been a perfect day."

Mayfly is born in May. She will only live for one day so every moment is precious. Humans do live longer than one day but equally the underlying message in this book is clear - it is important to value your day and your relationships. It is also important to notice and celebrate the world you live in no matter how big or how small.

This book opens with a calendar page. The date 18th May is circled because this is the birthday of May (that's the name I am giving her) - the mayfly. A frog spies the newly emerged mayfly. He is the voice of doom. "The world out there will eat you up ... not that it matters. You'll only live for one day, anyway."

How will she react - here is the opportunity to talk about optimism. Mayfly says - "One whole day! It's hard to believe." 

As we watch Mayfly exploring her world including the big city, we also see a young girl with her grandparents. Think about their life journey. There is a scene where, as a reader, we are given a birds-eye view of the city. Notice the shop and building names - these are a powerful way to show a life journey - A1 Daycare; Day Street Primary; Day Street High School, Juan Dei University; Juan Dei Student housing; The Daily Grind Pty Ltd; Day Job Corporation; Daydream travel; Daily bakery; Sunset Retirement living; and Apel A. Daye Hospital.

Okay this is a big call, but I am going to say One Day is my 2025 book of the year (so far). I was previously a CBCA (Children's Book Council of Australia) picture book judge. I wish I had that privilege this year so that I could champion One Day as a book that needs to be added to all school libraries. This is a perfect example of a multilayered picture book which can be shared across school grades. This book is sure to appear on lots of awards lists.

Walker Books Australia released One Day this week. They have made a teaching kit (aimed at a very young audience) but this book is sure to lead to very deep discussions with older readers in middle and upper primary classes about the circle of life, our human life journey, our brief time on earth, the importance of family relationships, along with -  techniques of illustrators, book design (colour palette, embossed lettering on the cover, end papers), and page/book formats. 

I don't often comment on the work of book designers, but Sarah Mitchell deserves a huge award for her work on this book. You can follow her on Facebook. 

The text of this book is brilliant, but it is equally brilliant to see how Michael Speechley extends this text with tiny illustration details AND the 'calendar-style' format where you turn this book sideways is so different and utterly perfect. (I was not able to find the official term for this).

There is a word that I quoted at the top of this post. It made me gasp:

incandescent

That is the perfect word to describe One Day by Shirley Marr - incandescent! Paul MacDonald used another perfect word in his review - "a stunner".

Here is some more of the text from One Day:

"To her astonishment she takes flight. But it's easy to feel small in a big world. Life is a map with no set destination. One that can take you in any direction. ... Life is a moment in time."

Interview: One Day introduces a little girl in a yellow raincoat to a mayfly who is determined to make every moment of her day count. ‘We playfully discussed, during a chance meeting, the hypothetical question of “What would you do if you only lived for one day?”,’ said Marr and Speechley. ‘The idea quickly became something driven primarily by the love of art and prose that neither of us believed would find publication—if not for the support of agent Gemma Cooper of the Bent Agency. We cannot wait for readers to delve into our passion project and meet Mayfly!’  ‘Shirley and Michael’s beautiful encapsulation of the notion of carpe diem has never been more beautiful,’ said Walker publisher Clare Hallifax. ‘From Shirley’s exquisite prose to Mike’s charming and inventive illustration, readers young and old will be charmed and inspired.’ Books and Publishing interview

Here is the very best companion book (sadly long out of print):

Mayfly Day

Try to find this book too:

Life

I highly recommend these middle grade novels by Shirley Marr - she is one of our top Australian children's writers. 

Countdown to Yesterday (5 stars); All four quarters of the Moon; A Glasshouse of Stars

Michael Speechley has been a graphic designer and high school art teacher in WA. His first picture book, The All New Must Have Orange 430, explores themes of consumerism and the environment. It was shortlisted and awarded as an Honour Book in the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Children’s Book of the Year Award in 2019 and was the winner of The Wilderness Society’s 2019 Environment Award for Children’s Literature, Picture Books. His second book is The Gift, which was published in September 2019. This book deals with loss, kindness and the joy of giving. It was a Notable Book in the 2020 CBCA Book of the Year Awards and was shortlisted for the 2019 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards.

Kinderbookswitheverything - a book blog you need to dive into NOW!

Blog post 19th April 2013

Every time I visit this library (where I have been working as a volunteer) I waiver between enormous happiness and then a kind of despair as I realise there are SO MANY books I still need to read and SO MANY authors and illustrators I need to discover. Tonight I decided to start re-reading my friend's blog - Kinderbookswitheverything working backwards from her very first post. In 2010 she celebrated an author or illustrator each day - this could be a wonderful way for you to build you own 'field knowledge' if you are new to the library role or are unfamiliar with some of the best authors and illustrators from around the world. 

My friend at Kinderbookswitheverything has worked in her school library for over thirty years. Today was the last day of the term. There was so much to do. First off she had to take all her timetabled classes - a very full day. Meanwhile her wonderful library assistant and I were shelving the hundreds of books that had been returned by the teachers who used them in Term one and reshelving returns from the children and reshelving the last bundles of displayed books. And then we set up four new book displays - ANZAC Day, Mother's Day, Koala Day (May 3rd); and a fantastic display of books about building and construction - I should have taken a photo. Oh, and my friend was also busy pulling down her Easter decorations, updating children who have completed the NSW Premier's Reading Challenge, and loaning books to parents (in this school parents can borrow up to ten books). It was a busy day which is not unusual.

Strangely, I have never thought to ask why she gave her blog this name back when she started it in 2009. We both started our blogs around the same time because we signed up for a course and this one was one of the 'assignments' and now here we are in 2025 and our blogs are still 'alive'. She also has an extensive Pinterest collection of picture books and other books on a huge range of topics. I did a search for the covers of a few of her favourite books (and yes all of them are quite old but that surely does not matter at all because they can be found in a library). 

When you begin to explore her blog I suggest you click on January 2022 where you will find links to a series of splendid posts about books to support The Sustainable Development Goals. 

Here is a small sample of her post content just to inspire you. Perhaps you could begin by clicking on your own birthday - I did that and made a couple of surprise discoveries:

• June 21st (2016) World Giraffe Day
• July 14th (2017) Pandemonium Day
• March 16th (2017) National Hiccup Day
• April 29 (2018) World Wish Day
• June 23rd (2020) Typewriter Day
• September 1st (2022) World Letter Writing Day
• May 3rd (2022) Wild Koala Day
• August 5th 2023 International Traffic Light Day
• August 3rd 2024 Sandcastle Day

While browsing her past posts I came across this poem:

Twenty Minutes A Day by Richard Peck 

Read to your children, twenty minutes a day;

You have the time, And so do they.

Read while the laundry is in the machine;

Read while the dinner cooks;

Tuck a child in the crook of your arm

And reach for the library books.

Hide the remote,

Let the computer games cool,

For one day your children will be off to school.

"Remedial?" "Gifted?" You have the choice; Let them hear their first tales

In the sound of your voice.

Read in the morning;

Read over noon;

Read by the light of Goodnight Moon.

Turn the pages together,

Sitting close as you'll fit,

Till a small voice beside you

says, "Hey, don't quit."

Facts! One for every day of the year by Tracey Turner illustrated by Fatti Burke

 

I do enjoy books that follow this format - a poem for every day of the year; a word for every day of the year; or a fact for every day of the year.

Facts! is a book you could share in a family or in a classroom or in a school library. In the library the daily fact could be used as a jumping off point for research or for a discussion about how to approach a research topic using key words; searching for web sites with authority; and exploring ways to narrow or refine a topic search. Your class could begin their own trivia book - aiming to collect another 365 fun facts! You could also design a way to organise all of the facts your students discover over the year.

There is no index or glossary in this colourful book and that might be of concern to some librarians but the search for information on a specific topic is not the purpose of this book which is sure to delight all collectors of trivia and of course this book is perfect for fans of The Guinness Book of Records. Each double page spread covers several days and some facts, which are circled, present events on specific dates.  This is not a book to use for the topic "On this Day" but rather it is just a miscellaneous collection of facts from every discipline - science, maths, geography, astronomy, history, biology and more. 

Publisher blurb: Discover a fact for everyone, everyday, in this book. Explore a world of topics, from hilarious animals, to unbelievable-but-true science facts, mind-blowing space stats, to incredible human achievements. You can even look up what extraordinary event happened on your birthday!  Did you know that Ancient Romans used wee to whiten their teeth, and to do their laundry? Or have you heard of the parrotfish, which covers itself in a cosy, thick layer of its own slime before it goes to sleep? Why not celebrate New Year's Eve like the Estonians: tuck into seven meals to give you strength for the year ahead. Delicious.  It's most important to know that you should never shake hands with a bushbaby: the animals pee on their paws so that they leave a smelly trail wherever they go. Find out all this and much, much more, with enough facts for even the most curious reader. Also includes seasonal and 'on this day' facts for added curiosity and fun, plus a completely random mix of everything else you can imagine.

Here are a few fun facts:

• Smallest car ever produced was 140cm long, 100cm wide and 120cm high. It is called a Peel P50.
• Cockroaches can live up to a week without their heads!
• When you are eight years old your brain is already the same size as it's going to be when you are an adult.
• Tin food was invented in 1810 - 45 years before tin openers!
• There is enough iron in the human body to make a 7.5cm nail.

As suggested in the blurb I checked out my birthday - On this day in 1859 Charles Darwin's book The Origin of the Species was published. 

You can see other books illustrated by Irish illustrator Fatti Burke here. 

Here are some other books by Tracey Turner. It seems pretty clear she loves collecting facts and trivia and she loves to organise her findings: