The Sunny Day Squad: The Quest for the Caringstone - Michael Panzner - ★★

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AUTHOR: Michael Panzner
ILLUSTRATOR: Polly Mooney
GENRE: Children's Picture Book
RATING: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: An indie picture book aimed at early readers. Great in intent, but needs a lot of work in the execution.

Story Synopsis:
Ollie the monkey, Poppy the puppy, Daisy the rabbit, and Ted the horse form the Sunny Day Squad. Each has a special talent that they use to bring joy to the world.
One day, an explorer named Captain Bravebutter approaches them with an ancient map that reveals the location of the Caringstone, a gem that can make even the saddest child smile. He asks the Squad to help him find the stone. Thus begins the adventure, which ends exactly how a children’s book should end – with happy smiles all around.


I do like the intent of the story. The four squad members are distinct in their strengths, but they work well as a team and their friendship also helps them coordinate their tasks better. The book stresses on the importance of teamwork and on using your skills to help others. The animal characters will appeal better to children. The basic story is sweet, but there’s nothing to set it apart from the hordes of other books in this category that deliver the same message.

The story is written in text blocks, with 1-4 blocks per page. On the pro side, there are several clever instances of alliteration in the text. The prose-based approach helps keep the focus on the plot. However, the textual content needs a bit more fine-tuning. Considering that the book is aimed at readers aged 3-7, the density of the text is quite high, though it is spaced out well on the page. In some cases, there should have been para breaks as the block shifted narratives without a clear indicator of who was speaking. Some punctuation marks are missing.

Moreover, there are some difficult words in the content (terrain, loon, optimism,…), which kids of the target age group might not know or understand. There’s even one mention of ‘crazy’, which I don’t prefer seeing in an early readers’ book.

There are many continuity gaps in the story. For instance, the children in the park anticipate an adventure even before the Captain has arrived on the scene. Bravebutter had asked the squad to accompany him on his quest as he can’t find the stone alone. However, he then goes missing from the quest, and suddenly pop back in after the stone is retrieved. As the title indicates, the focus of the book is merely on the quest for the Caringstone. Its use isn’t shown in the book, nor do we know who the magical figure is who reveals the location details to the explorer in his dream. A few more lines would have helped explain the jumps in the story and offer a better reading experience.

The illustrations could have saved the book for me to a certain extent, but they too were a mixed bag. The sketches are decent, though not exactly in a style I enjoy. I loved the beavers in their hard hats. The smiling sunflowers were also cute, though I couldn’t figure out why only the sunflowers had faces and the rest of the plants and trees didn’t. Some sketches don’t match the text, and some left me with queries. It’s not like I expect scientific accuracy when animals are drawn in picture books, but some basic details ought to be correct. So I can ignore a horse being shown as kneeling over a do-it-yourself project, and am even okay with a horse wearing trousers while his friend the monkey doesn’t. But I can’t accept a horse living and sleeping in a treehouse! Pete the “parrot” is actually drawn as a smaller version of a scarlet macaw. Macaws are parrots, but would children understand that the ”red parrot” in the story isn’t a typical parrot?

All in all, this is a book with its heart in the right place, but mere heart doesn’t make it a must-read. As someone who has read plenty of books in this genre, I didn’t really find any USP in this story, and in today’s competitive picture book market, a USP is a must. This book might work better for you if you are not too fussy about the above mentioned issues. As I said, the target age is 3-7 years, but it would certainly have to be read with the help of an adult.

My thanks to BooksGoSocial, author Michael Panzner, and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Sunny Day Squad”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. Sorry this didn’t work out better.

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