The Do-Something Day

This was one of my absolute favorite books when I was a small child. The protagonist is a little boy whose family is about to go to a fair, and all the family members are too busy preparing for the fair to pay attention to him, so his mother tells him to go do something. So he goes around his neighborhood, helping various shopkeepers with odd jobs, and each shopkeeper rewards him with a little gift. The shoemaker gives him some shoes, the butcher gives him some sausages, the green grocer gives him some grapes, the pet store owner gives him a puppy, etc. When the boy comes back home, it turns out that all of those things (sans the puppy) are useful to his family members for the fair. His mother tells him how proud she is of him, and that he had a do-something day instead of a do-nothing day. Now, it's been more than a decade since I read this book, so I might have incompletely remembered some details. This is a wonderful book, though, and I would definitely recommend it.