A Day Off School

By Oliver Jeffers & Kevin Waldron

HarperCollins Australia 2026

Reviewed by Mia Macrossan

Oliver Jeffers has won many awards for his work including the Nestlé Children’s Book Prize Gold Award, the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award and the Irish Children’s Book of the Year. He writes about anything and everything and here he is exploring the changing feelings of a child allowed to take a day off school,  explored with enthusiastic vim and vigour in the atmospheric illustrations of Irish graphic artist Kevin Waldron.

Herbie is excited because he is allowed to stay home from school. He starts to enjoy the day: he builds a fort, plays Space Blasters, races his cars, and draws a dinosaur but by midday these activities have palled. He wonders if something really good may have happened at school –  such as a dog loose in corridors or the firework factory coming to demonstrate some new experiments!  What if pirates invaded? So he happily goes back to school the next day but it is not what he hoped for.

Oliver Jeffer’s text deftly captures Herbie’s thoughts and feelings as they change from delight and anticipation to boredom and speculation to a perfect conclusion.  I love Kevin Waldron’s highly coloured last page showing some dinosaurs heading for the school, a marked contrast to the dull brown previous spread, so maybe something exciting will happen after all?

This humorous take on a day off school where initial delight is overcome by FOMO is shown with inventive verve by Kevin Waldron. His pages become more and more extravagant with bold colour and larger and more dramatic text as Herbie imagines what he could be missing out on. A book to enjoy sharing, as it will initiate talk about what actually happens at school and what could maybe, happen, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if…

Age 3+