One Day a Mayfly

by Shirley Marr, Michael Speechley (Illustrator)

Overview

A mayfly newly born in the city gives meaning to “seize the day” in this lyrical, stunningly illustrated story at once poignant and uplifting.

One early spring day, Mayfly emerges from a lake in the middle of the city, looks around, lifts her wings nervously, and takes flight. Nobody notices, except for a little girl in a yellow raincoat, following close behind. Mayfly has been given just one day—her birthday!—but she intends to live life to the fullest, with the wind beneath her wings. Michael Speechley’s striking illustrations follow the mayfly’s flight from close-up views to bird’s-eye panoramas, contrasting the natural world of the lake and the bustling city around it. As Mayfly completes her life cycle and people live theirs in parallel, oblivious to the tiny creature nearby, she embraces the uncertainty and joy of life—and the surprises that lie around any corner. Beautifully designed in “calendar” format, with a simple, poetic text and warm visual humor and clues, here is a book with appeal for fans of Duck, Death, and the Tulip—a bittersweet ode to the wonder and possibility of life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536249422
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	05/27/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	40
File size:	15 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Shirley Marr is a first-generation Chinese-Australian and the award-winning author of A Glasshouse of Stars, named a Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year and winner of the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award for Writing for Children, and the middle-grade novel Countdown to Yesterday. She lives in Perth, Western Australia.

Michael Speechley’s debut picture book, The All New Must Have Orange 430, was a Children’s Book Council of Australia Honor Book and a Wilderness Society Environment Award for Children’s Literature winner. He also illustrated The Gift, a Children’s Book Council of Australia Notable Book. He works as a high school art teacher in Western Australia, where he lives.

Editorial Reviews

A tale to have readers seizing the day.
—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2025-03-08
Mayfly’s life shows that it’s not the days in one’s life that matter, but the life in one’s days.

While Marr’s main text focuses on the titular creature’s brief, single-day existence, Speechley’s accompanying illustrations depict a brown-skinned youngster who sees the insect while walking through a city with a pair of elders (presumably grandparents). As the mayfly zips about, the child follows, with text on buildings and signs offering layers of meaning. Though cartoonish, the sepia-toned illustrations are meticulously detailed, integrating seamlessly with the spare text. The child observes the mayfly’s brief life cycle as words and pictures combine to show how the youngster symbolically moves through the stages of life, too. “Life is a map with no set destination,” an unseen narrator tells us as the child follows the mayfly past a day care, a primary school, a high school, and a university. Later spreads similarly highlight career options, the joy of travel and the arts, and representations of birth (a hospital maternity ward) and death (a funeral procession outside a church). Endpapers designed as calendar pages provide further context for the child’s story, as do framing scenes with a frog who first attempts to discourage the mayfly (“The world out there will eat you up…Not that it matters. You’ll only live for one day anyway”) and then is surprised at her triumphant return after “a perfect day.”

A tale to have readers seizing the day.(Picture book. 4-7)

Kirkus Reviews