All in a day

When I was at Carleton last weekend for my Alumni Adventures Committee meeting, I received a gift.  I’ve been the (very distracted by small children) chair of the committee for the last couple years, and I’ve been serving on the committee in general for five years.  This was my last in-person meeting, and as a farwell gift, the committee gave me a book.  All In A Day, by Cynthia Rylant and illustrated by Nikki McClure.

It’s a lovely, joyous book.  It reminds me of some of my favorite passages from Anne of Green Gables and from Laura Ingalls’ On the Shores of Silver Lake.

And the illustrations!  Nikki McClure is a pretty new illustrator to me, and I am in love, love, love with her.

The author, Cynthia Rylant, has written umpteen-gillion books, and many of them are very special.   This one, though, has to be my favorite.

The books starts,

A day is a perfect piece of time
to live a life,
to plant a seed,

Then later…

A day is all you have to be,
it’s all you get to keep.

So live it well, make it count,
fill it up with you.
The day’s all yours, it’s waiting now…
See what you can do.

Such a lovely book!  I encourage you to go out and check it out yourself!

8 Replies to “All in a day”

  1. Nikki McClure has a great baby book called The First 1000 Days. It's beautiful & suits lots of different families. Something that is hard to find in baby books!

  2. Nikki McClure has a great baby book called The First 1000 Days. It's beautiful & suits lots of different families. Something that is hard to find in baby books!

  3. i’m so glad, althea, that you have a copy of that book — that gem. i want to frame many a nikki mcclure print — but mitch and i can never seem to quite agree on our favorites.
    i love the line that says, “fill it up with you.” i get misty-eyed perhaps every time i read that line aloud. xo

Comments are closed.