Gertie wakes up with a terrible case of the grumps and proceeds to be mean and grouchy to everyone she encounters. When the cheerful flowers, fishes and sun become as unhappy as her, she feels worse than ever.

Grumpy Gertie features sturdy board-book pages with a clever die-cut of a frown that cuts through the entire book and becomes a central feature of the illustrations; so when a monkey hanging upside-down swings by to show Gertie how to turn her mood around by swinging with him, the reader is told to turn the book upside down to continue the story. As you can probably guess, from this point on, the frowns on all the faces turn into smiles. A cute book that helps children to understand their own emotions and how they affect others.