Un día sin cole

Herbie has a cold and has to stay home. A whole day off school! He builds a fort on the sofa and eats breakfast inside, plays Space Blasters, races toy cars, draws a dinosaur... and by mid-morning he's already checked everything off his list. Then the question arises: what's happening at school without him? What if they've had extra recess? What if there's a dog running loose in the hallways? What if pirates have attacked, or a monster has crawled out of the sewers, or aliens have landed? When his sister Daisy comes home and replies with a simple "nothing much," Herbie almost believes her. Almost. Because he could swear he saw a space helmet sticking out of her backpack... Oliver Jeffers, this publisher's go-to author, only writes the text here and for the first time hands over the art: the illustrations are by Kevin Waldron, who turns each of Herbie's fantasies into a scene more outlandish than the last. The result is a comedy about the universal fear of missing out. It happens to us at eight years old and it's still happening to us at forty.