Chelsea Lin Wallace

If Judith Viorst's Alexander (and his Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day) were rendered in Kaya Doi's colored pencil, and in poetry, it might be something like this. Everything goes wrong (no pudding cup in lunch!) but gets turned into an ode. Sweet, funny, honest.

Yum's trademark colored pencil illustrations shine with surprising color blends that punctuate scenes with glowing neon. Yum has a knack for capturing childhood with roundness - round bellies, round wailing mouths, round faces, round side eyes. The style is ideal for capturing the heightened drama of bad day feelings. The everyday woes of a child take on epic proportions in this dramatic ode. Rhyming text scans well. A humorous springboard for discussions of feelings and odes.