Henry's happy birthday Book

What a mixed bag this book is. The overview is that Henry wakes up on his birthday and everything seems to go wrong--until he modulates his expectations and has a pretty good day after all.

Reading this as an adult who was a child is what makes this a weird book. On the one hand, I like the message that having super high expectations for something like a birthday that involves other people is a bad idea, and the sooner kids get that celebrations really aren't all about them, the sooner they can begin to see the joy of what other people bring to the mix. On the other hand, I distinctly remember the first birthday where I realized that even "my day" was about other people's expectations, and that sucked hardcore.

So this is a good book, and I'm glad it has a mostly happy ending (though Henry still had to wear a tie), but it's definitely a lot of The Adult World creeping into childhood. If that's your thing, go for it. Perhaps offer your kid some other opportunity where what they want really does matter, though; "settling" shouldn't be something we teach them to do all the time.