The Sorely Trying Day

Children, though deeply senstive to their own feelings, are usually oblivious to the distress that their behaviour causes adults. A book in which a father comes home 'feeling tired and weary' and is met with familiar family strife is therefore balm to the soul ... The wit and cleverness of The Sorely Trying Day could not be more timely, and the book has a delicious ring of political satire that adults will enjoy. The prodigiously gifted American author Russell Hoban is best-known here for his classic fantasy novel Riddley Walker and also for The Mouse and His Child, but this picture book has not been published here before, and it's a peach. The absurdity of each crime (one child hurls paint at another merely for laughing 'in that peculiarly aggravating way') will make children of 6+ shriek with mortified recognition. It would make an excellent, and pointed, present from any grandparent or godparent -- Amanda Craig Times Told in balanced, musical prose, and illustrated with restrained yet lively observation, this is a welcome reissue of a book showing the Hobans working in charming harmony. Carousel