The Worst Day Ever! is a quirky, action-packed space adventure that teaches children the importance of empathy.
Meet Mylan – an ordinary blue alien. He’s travelling the universe, looking for someone having a bad day, to help them. Meet Chloe. She’s just stubbed her toe. Now she’s being followed by an alien. Her day can only get better, right? WRONG.
Every bad day begins with a stubbed toe. Mylan’s research proves this. But even he couldn’t predict how Chloe’s day would escalate from a sore foot to the entire Earth being swallowed up.
While Mylan and Chloe embark on an extraordinary adventure to save Earth, they also learn the importance of treating others how they’d like to be treated.
Mylan is part of an alien race called Empathians, and they all feel a tremendous amount of empathy. Mylan can feel what everyone is feeling across an entire planet all at once! Over time, he has learnt to drown out the noise and focus on those in desperate need of help – those having the worst days ever.
While this epic adventure is full of quirky aliens, engaging characters and witty illustrations, at its heart it is a story about kindness. It even teaches children how to turn bad days into good days, as Mylan believes that any day that ends with ice cream couldn’t possibly be the Worst Day Ever!
Curriculum-linked resources are available to download here. Hachette’s classroom resources are suitable for KS2 children aged 7+, and they include extracts from the book, corresponding reading questions and a sequence of lessons to create a new alien planet!
Watch James read an extract from the book here:
James Bishop is a children’s author, writer of the Iguana Boy series about a superhero who can talk to iguanas, and The Worst Day Ever! Fay Austin has worked as a creative practitioner in schools and theatrical settings for 14 years and is a self-taught illustrator. Browse more resources for Empathy Day 2023.
