Mama’s Day with Little Gray is a book that switches roles. The little elephant Gray imagines what it would be like if his mother was little like him and he was the big elephant. As he goes through the day he realizes that all the nice things that he would want to do for his mother are very similar to what she does for him. This story shows the role of a mother. In the story Gray says, “’When the sun rose high’ he said, ‘I would lead us to the shade and watch over you.’” The love and care that we see in this story is what a mom is usually displayed as. The illustrations in this story are very soft, which could be because of the use of watercolors. In the classroom this is a book that could be read aloud for fun. Questions could be asked so that the students can get a definition of what their mom is to them. ( )

Mother's Day reading. ( )

Mama's Day with Little Gray is a heart warming story for young children who have a close bond with their mother. Little Gray's big questions is, "When I grow up, will you grow down?" This question takes him on a day of telling him mom what he could do when he's big and she's "small". The story is sweet because everything Little Gray says he makes sure to include how he'd care for his mama. When having this story read to a child they begin to think of the things they can and will do when they grow up and wonder where their mother will be. This gets a child's mind rolling on who they want to be when they grow up and expands their imagination for what growing up looks like. ( )

Mama's Day with Little Gray is a very sweet story about a baby elephant and his mother.

The lovely illustrations were the highlight of the book for me, each one corresponding clearly with the text. The elephants’ faces were expressive, and you could easily imagine their conversation based on the picture cues.

The text was mostly dialogue, appropriate for a second grade reader.

One aspect that didn’t quite work for me is that while most of the text was black in straight lines, there were occasional sections with colored or wavy text. It wasn’t clear why that text was wavy as it didn’t appear to be a consistent choice (for example, it would have made sense to me if the baby elephant spoke in the wavy text throughout the story). That threw me off while reading, but overall this is a very cute book about taking care of each other. ( )