The Backward Day

Imagine your whole day lived backward, from beginning to end. When you got up, you’d put on your jacket, then your shirt and pants, and over those your underwear, because after all, backward is backward, and on a backward day backward is the way everything has to be. You’d walk downstairs backward and sit on your chair backward with your back to the table, and when your parents greeted you in the morning you’d say, of course, “Good night.” But how long can a backward day go on? Just long enough for a smart kid to reverse the spell he’s cast on the whole household and return everything to normal. The Backward Day, a delightfully stylish picture book by the Caldecott Prize–winning team of Marc Simont and Ruth Krauss, brings to life a humorous and engaging reversal of ordinary reality that will enchant young children, as well parents.

Ruth Krauss (1901-1993), a member of the experimental Writer's Laboratory at the Bank Street School in New York City in the 1940s, imaginatively used humor and invented words to create some of the very first books for children that highlighted a child's inner life. She collaborated with some of the greatest illustrators in children's literature, including Maurice Sendak and her husband, Crockett Johnson.

Marc Simont (1915- ) was born in Paris. When he was 19, Mr. Simont moved to America. His first illustrations for a children's book appeared in 1939. Since then, he has illustrated nearly a hundred books, working with authors as diverse as Margaret Wise Brown and James Thurber. He won a Caldecott Honor in 1950 for illustrating Ruth Krauss's The Happy Day, and in in 1957 he was awarded the Caldecott Medal for his pictures in A Tree is Nice, by Janice May Udry. Mr. Simont and his wife have one grown son, two dogs and a cat. They live in West Cornwall, Connecticut.