Natalie and the One-of-a-Kind Wonderful Day!

by Dandi Daley Mackall, Lys Blakeslee (Illustrator)

Overview

Natalie has big five-year-old dreams for her future. So big, that her heart gets thumpy with excitement. Nat uses her very own words to tell about her hopes, struggles, and adventures. This makes the That’s Nat! series perfect for young readers just ready for chapter books. What Makes Natalie’s Day Wonderful? Natalie wants to do something no one else has done. But everything she tries goes wrong. There’s the egg wreck and the purple wallpaper mess. Through it all, Nat discovers something truly wonderful.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780310715665
Publisher:	Zonderkidz
Publication date:	05/10/2009
Series:	That's Nat! , #1
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.40(h) x 0.30(d)
Age Range:	6 - 10 Years

About the Author

Dandi Daley Mackall loves God, children, words, and animals. Her nearly 500 books for children and grown-ups have sold more than four million copies worldwide. She won the ECPA Christian Book Award for Best Children’s Book 2015 and multiple Mom’s Choice Awards, as well as ALA Best Book, NY Public Library Top Pick, Children’s Book Council Award of Excellence, and the Helen Keating Ott Award for Contributions to Children’s Literature. Her novel My Boyfriends’ Dogs is now a Hallmark Movie. Dandi writes from rural Ohio, where she lives with her family, including horses, dogs, cats, and an occasional squirrel, deer, or raccoon.

Editorial Reviews

Narrated by the self-numbered Natalie 24, an overactive five-year-old with a lot of big ideas, this Junie B. Jones knockoff packs a lot of action into a just a few pages. Left to her own devices Natalie makes "Omel-Nats" (omelets) for her family. Her parents do not hear her as she break eggs, opens grape jelly, drops a bag of flour and explodes the microwave in making her one-of-a-kind treat. When her parents eventually do wake up, they don't flip out; they simple say, "Only Natalie"-words that Natalie learns to hate. Natalie goes on about her day and gets into other scrapes-drawing with purple crayons on the bathroom wall, decorating her father's church shoes, bringing ants into the house. Her parents end her day with a talk with her about God's love and His acceptance. Natalie's language is very, very close to Junie B., complete with the mangling of the names of common objects ("spit-u-la thing") and the use of the word "that" ("I love that purple stuff"). Good thing God forgives her-many parents would be investigating that "spare the rod" verse. (Fiction. 5-8)

Kirkus Reviews