This book is weird. And kind of tone deaf. And it probably doesn't help that I remember Snicket for his racist joke about [a: Jacqueline Woodson|74640|Jacqueline Woodson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1327352477p2/74640.jpg]. So, mom is in a bad mood because her daughter poked her son with a stick, but her bad mood leaves her when she watches a man fall into the mud and it makes her laugh. It's not even like she's laughing while going to help him up - she sees him fall, laughs, and then her and kids walk on. So maybe it's not surprising that her daughter's cheered by hurting her brother? Anyway, the man then grumps his way over to sexually harassing the owner of the dry cleaner's but he's so good-looking in his tighty-whities that despite her telling him to keep his damn pants on in her place of business they get married. YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN.

Matt Forsythe's illustrations are just darling, though. ( )

the terrible power of censorship was bestowed upon a few dozen twitter users who stirred up false controversy by claiming that this book's illustrations were racist. hence the work in its current form is significantly impaired. believe it or not, it's a little ineffective to represent a bad mood as a rainbow cotton candy cloud.

other than that, the illustrations are beautiful and great.

the story is very original, and certainly means well, but i think daniel handler is losing his way in picture book writing. he tries to keep his sentences short and punchy, but they're getting so stripped down that they create jarring ambiguous moments and the narrative gets muddled. ( )

So much to love about this book! You never know what is going to happen when a bad mood or a stick are hanging around! In this tale a little girl is in a bad mood because she walked past an ice cream store but was unable to have any ice cream. Readers see the angry, yet colorful cloud over her head move on to Curly's mother when Curly begins poking her little brother with a stick. As we read we see many characters carrying around the bad mood (cloud).The stick that Curly used to poke her brother meanwhile has been thrown in the bushes, picked upand discarded by a racoon, inhabited by a cocoon and finally retrieved by the ice cream man who puts it on display in his shop. Characters who may have carried the bad mood for awhile wonder at the butterfly that is eventually released, gather for a wedding, and sometimes pick up that bad mood again! "You yourself had it many times." Written by Lemony Snicket and illustrated by Matthew Forsythe this book reminds us that sometimes we all carry a little bad mood but sometimes it's good to set it down.

There are a lot of bad reviews about this book - particularly focused on the man who walks into the cleaners and takes off his pants but I'd like to think that if that happened to me I would start laughing too! This book was an OK read for kids and bad moods may not be passed through a stick but they can definitely be passed from person to person and sometimes all it takes is laughter for that bad mood to dissipate. ( )

Fun idea and probably would be a good read aloud to talk about with kids but the prose didn't flow for me. Also kids will probably be distracted and goofy for a few minutes when you get to the page with the muddy man in his underwear. ( )