Just Another
Ordinary Day is a children’s picture book by Rod Clement. It is a very
clever, multi-layered book which can be analysed in many ways. The cleverest
thing about this book is how different, yet similar, the text is from the
illustrations. If the text was read independent of the pictures, it would be a
very different story. The title of the book relates to the text as it tells of
standard, every-day events happening to main character Amanda and her family. However,
the illustrations show a weird and wacky world that Amanda lives in. For example,
Amanda “flies” downstairs for breakfast (a common metaphorical term). However,
the picture shows her operating a flying contraption from a high cliff down
towards where she’s having breakfast. This type of wordplay is common
throughout the book.
This book does an excellent job of showing how words can be
used to convey several different meanings. It could be used as an excellent
resource for creative writing and developing language and vocabulary skills. It
also demonstrates the importance of understanding the context of a story.
An interactive activity for students reading this book could
be to come up with their own creative illustrations using the text from the
book. Similarly, this book could be read to a whole class by covering the
pictures and reading the text and asking students to guess what the images
could be.
This book would be best suited for early primary students.
Josh Rouse
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