Yellow Dress Day by Michelle Worthington

New Frontier, 2012. ISBN: 9781921928291.
Highly recommended for children aged 4-6. Ava owns dresses in every colour of the rainbow and dresses each day to match her mood and the weather. She wears red on days when the sun shines on cracked, dry roads, pink when flowers open their petals toward the sun, purple when the clouds abound, blue on snowy days and yellow on windy, autumn days. When she awakes one 'whistling, whirly, windy day', she looks for her yellow dress only to find it is not in her wardrobe. Realising that she has worn it the previous day, she needs help in finding something else to match the feeling in her heart. Will she find just the right thing?
On face value, this is just a joyful celebration of seasons, childhood and imagination. On reading the dedication page, one discovers that the book is written for Ava Lardner, a child whom one can only assume suffers from Rett syndrome. Consequently, 5% of the profits from the book go to supporting the International Rett Syndrome Foundation. The publisher's details provide only a snippet of information regarding the illustrator Sophie Norsa but she is certainly someone to watch out for. Apparently the illustrations for this book were done following her Year 10 work experience with the publisher and she is now studying for her HSC. Her free and simplistic illustrations depict the joy of childhood and Ava's emotions perfectly. The colours are vibrant and happy and complement the descriptive text perfectly.
As well as being a delightful story to share with very young children, I can imagine it being used with Junior Primary classes to provide a starting point and model for descriptive writing lessons.
Jo Schenkel