Emma Quay, Happy All Over, ABC Books, April 2024, 32 pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9780733341441
How many joys, small and large can be found in a single day? Emma Quay’s newest title, Happy All Over is a snapshot which captures the many ways in which children (and adults) experience happiness. Using simple rhyming text, and gorgeous brush and ink illustrations, each page features new delights and things that make us happy. The ‘Little things, all day, topping us up’ remind us to find the light and colour each day; whether in a juicy bite of fruit, a star on a sticker chart, or the way it feels to lie on the floor and relax after a big day. Visitors, baby birds in a nest, sharing a story on a warm lap or a flop on a trampoline, all of these make us happy all over and should be treasured.
Quay provides teacher resources and ideas on her website, including activity sheets, cutouts for display and a video sharing the delicate coloured tissue paper droplets that create the stylised motif that is repeated throughout the illustrations, representing happiness falling into people’s lives and gradually filling them up with colour. As the children dance, dance, bounce, jump, spring, cuddle, huddle, lick, gurgle and more, the text creates auditory imagery, which will be fun to read aloud and share with small groups of beginning readers building their vocabulary. Read to and celebrate with babies, toddlers, pre-schoolers and early years students!
Reviewed by Kay Oddone
