Review by New York Times Review
In four picture books, the evening gives rise to dreams and the urge to explore shadowy worlds. EDMOND: THE MOONLIT PARTY By Astrid Desbordes Illustrated by Marc Boutavant 32 pp. Enchanted Lion Books. $17.95. (Ages 4 to 8) THE NIGHT WORLD Written and illustrated by Mordicai Gerstein 40 pp. Little, Brown & Company. $18. (Ages 3 to 6) BLACK AND WHITE Written and illustrated by Dahlov Ipcar 40 pp. Flying Eye Books. $17.95. (Ages 3 to 7) TELL ME WHAT TO DREAM ABOUT Written and illustrated by Giselle Potter 40 pp. Schwartz & Wade Books. $17.99. (Ages 3 to 7) THE NIGHT, as a fervent lyric made famous by Patti Smith implies, may not belong to preschoolers. But it is nonetheless a time - and mystery-laden phenomenon - that fascinates all young children, and arouses fear in many. From the ritualized consolations of "Goodnight Moon" to the antic rebellion of "In the Night Kitchen," picture books have charted countless courses through the dark. The tradition continues in three new books and one notable reissue. "Edmond: The Moonlit Party" starts off, auspiciously, with three sharply drawn, idiosyncratic animal characters who live as neighbors in an old chestnut tree. Edmond, the diffident stay-at-home squirrel, makes nut jam, devours adventure stories and spends "his evenings making pompoms." Mr. George Owl plays dress-up, and gregarious Harry the bear throws late-night dance parties. The reader is led to wonder: When party time next rolls around, will Edmond join in the fun? The French writer Astrid Desbordes adores her quirky characters, and her enthusiasm is contagious. She notes with admiration the care with which George stores his costumes and the time it takes Edmond to complete one of his "magnificent" pompom hats. Details like these firm up and anchor a story, especially one tailored for younger children, in whom concrete thought still predominates. So it feels like a momentary wrong turn toward the abstract when Harry announces his intention to serve a "nothing tart" at his next party (a what?); and again when George, sounding like an owlish existentialist, muses on the seagull's carefree "life of wind and waves." The illustrator, Marc Boutavant, who is also from France, does a better job of keeping the three-some's escapades grounded in specifics. His exuberant, balloon-bright graphics - a stylish retro-Pop brew with winsome notes of Takashi Murakami and Richard Scarry - set a party mood long before shy Edmond decides the time has finally come for him to step out onto the dance floor. While the night sky serves as a backdrop to Edmond's awakening, the transformative power of darkness is key in Mordicai Gerstein's "The Night World." A house cat rouses a little boy from bed for a late-night ramble. Together they make their way through darkened interiors and out into the front yard. What to the boy has long been familiar territory now looks and feels both exciting and strange. "Are these shadows roses?" the boy wonders. "That shadow is a deer." Painting in a subtly modulated palette of grays and blacks, Gerstein, who won the 2004 Caldecott Medal for "The Man Who Walked Between the Towers," offers readers a kind of night-vision-goggles view of a child's absorbing adventure in perception. In perhaps the most remarkable illustration, Gerstein freeze-frames a moment just before dawn as color seeps back into the world. We glimpse a frenzied scene of scurrying raccoons, birds and other nocturnal wildlife, all mixed up in a gorgeous tangle of light and shadow. For Gerstein, an old-fashioned Romantic, wonder lies everywhere for those prepared to see it, and wide-eyed 4- and 5-year-olds look to be among the prime candidates. Gerstein's fable unfolds as a kind of waking dream. But in Dahlov Ipcar's "Black and White," real dreams are made visible: the dreams, as it happens, of two frisky, elegant-looking dogs - one black, the other white. A clever plot twist doubles as an inspired metaphor for the dogs' friendship: Their strikingly similar dreams feature a variety of animals with black-and-white coloration that combines their own - penguins, zebras and antelopes, among others. "Black and White" was first published in 1963, the year of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, and Ipcar has acknowledged her wish that her story might be read, in part, as an appeal for racial equality. Yet this is not just another message book. The daughter of the sculptor William Zorach and the artist Marguerite Zorach, Ipcar, now 97, illustrated her first picture book, "The Little Fisherman," with a text by Margaret Wise Brown, in 1945. Brown, best known as the author of "Goodnight Moon," remains America's peerless poet of early childhood, and it would seem that more than a little of Brown's puckish wit and calming lyricism rubbed off on her collaborator in this waggish tale about a "little black dog and a little white dog" with big dreams. What, though, of the little girl who speaks the title line in "Tell Me What to Dream About"? She and her big sister are chattering away at lights-out in the room they share. But what exactly are we overhearing? An anxious child's forlorn complaint, or a classic bid to keep the conversation going a while longer at bedtime? Either way, the younger child's request and her sister's indulgent responses give Giselle Potter all the reason she needs to paint a series of playful, faux-naïf, surrealist-inflected fantasy tableaus, nearly all of them suggested by a toy, fabric pattern or other visual prompt in the room. It is sad of course to imagine a child feeling all thumbs about dreaming. Might this then be a bellwether tale about the rumored dire effects of overabsorption in new media? Maybe yes and maybe no. But it is just as plausible to read Potter's scenario as an old-fashioned reminder that young children almost always have too much to absorb, and that for them a quiet story time in the company of a nurturing parent or caregiver is a reliable antidote to a day's worth of newness and chaos. Margaret Wise Brown waxed wise indeed when she described the essential difference between the ordinary run of stories that children tell themselves and those to be found in the children's books that rise to the level of literature. "A child's own story," Brown observed, "is a dream, but a good story is a dream that is true for more than one child." A very particular little girl like the one we meet here might well be unsatisfied with her own and her sister's improvisations. But the evocative dreamscapes of "Tell Me What to Dream About" are another story. LEONARD S. MARCUS is the author, most recently, of "Randolph Caldecott: The Man Who Could Not Stop Drawing."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 21, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Caldecott Medalist Gerstein delights and inspires readers in this meditation on the night. A sleeping boy is awakened by a meow. The cat on his bed, Sylvie, wants to go outside, even as the boy protests it's too early. But out of the dark house Is this our house? they creep, and Sylvie, who can now speak, tells the boy, It's coming. Several stunning two-page spreads executed in shades of black and charcoal and dotted by hundreds of bright stars bring the nighttime world close. Then animals step out of the shadows, making the outdoors pulse with life. By the time birds appear in the trees, the shadows are lifting, and the stars fade into the glow of morning. Glorious sunlit spreads capture not just the look of a breaking dawn but the haunting feel of watching night turn to day. Gerstein is at the top of his game here, capturing a nearly inexpressible mood. Beginning with the very darkest shades while the boy is in the house (with only the green eyes of the cat or the whites of the boy's eyes for color) makes readers look and look again, and once they are outside, the animals' stirrings will have children pointing at the darkened pages with delight. The strong yet simple message impresses: look around; there are so many wonderful things to see.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Caldecott Medalist Gerstein (The Man Who Walked Between the Towers) lifts two everyday miracles up for celebration-the way that night transforms objects into unfamiliar forms and shadows, and the way that morning restores them to their original splendor. One morning before dawn, a black cat jumps onto the bed of a boy. "Me-out!" Sylvie tells him. "It's coming." Gerstein paints the two as black shapes on soft gray; as they creep through the house, sleeping family members and bulky pieces of furniture create graceful, abstract compositions. For Gerstein, night is not a problem to be solved. The boy wanders without anxiety, and everything unfolds with a sense of leisurely pleasure. He wonders at the starry sky ("The air is warm and sweet.... This is the night world. There are shadows everywhere") and struggles to identify familiar things. "Are those lilies and sunflowers? Where are their colors?" Now, animals begin to gather in anticipation: deer, an owl, a porcupine, rabbits. "It's coming," they murmur. What's coming is clear, but readers will find their hearts beating faster despite themselves. The sky begins to lighten, becoming a pale, milky green. A turn of the page and the sky grows brighter; the animals retreat: "This is our bedtime." Yet another page turn, and the boy greets the rising sun. "It's here!" says Sylvie. The sun casts long yellow rays, and the flowers are revealed in all their glory. It's a remarkable achievement, gratifying for the way simple pencil lines and casual strokes of color are used to create the luminous spreads. Gerstein's sure eye and patient observation of each moment of the dawn provide all the drama this narrative needs. Ages 3-6. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2-The shadows of a summer night sing the promise of morning to a boy and his cat as they venture out into the dark yard surrounding their house. In the introductory scene just before the title page, the redheaded boy, tucked in bed in his darkened room, addresses the black cat curled above him, gazing through the window at the dusky world. "Good-night, Sylvie." Sylvie, it soon appears, is not ready for sleep and meows insistently until the two tiptoe through the sleeping house and out into the nighttime shadows. Gerstein's roughly sketched scenes with well-chosen detail are done on gray art paper, a fine choice for these shadowy night views. The early indoor scenes are boxed against the outer page. Heading for the open door, Sylvie hints, "It's coming...hurry." The dark outside opens fully on a spread and is soft and comfortable with shadows everywhere. "Are those shadows roses? Are those lilies and sunflowers? Where are their colors?" Soon the shadows reveal a great variety of animals that begin to echo Sylvie's hint. "It's on its way...here it comes...It's almost here." Eventually a glow appears above the trees, the shadowy animals slip away, and the world gathers color, leading to a full burst of sun. Boy and cat rush into the house to announce the beautiful day. Gerstein adds a personal note about his early childhood discomfort with the outer night world and his lifelong love of sunrise. Children will surely respond to his simple scheme, beautifully crafted with spare text and with much to enjoy in the homely views of house and yard. VERDICT This is fun bedtime fare, but so much more-parents and teachers will find many possibilities for conversations about night and day.-Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
An unnamed boy and his cat, Sylvie, sneak out of the house in the middle of the night to experience the wonders of the world after dark and the following dawn. The story begins before the title page, with the boy bidding good night to Sylvie, whos perched by his bedroom window looking out at the darkening sky. Fast forward to the wee hours, when Sylvie wakes her boy and the pair traipses through the house and out into the yard. There they encounter shadows, flowers, and a passel of animals waiting for something. Working on mottled dark-gray paper, Gerstein defines characters and objects in scribbly black silhouette. Everything is dark, save the white font, some white stars, the whites of the childs eyes, and Sylvies green eyes. At last the animals awaited dawn breaks, light and color gradually return, and the nocturnal wildlife retreat to the shadowy shrubs flanking the yard. Establishing a standard perspective across a number of spreads, Gerstein highlights the gentle change to the environment. The glory of daybreak, especially brilliant atop the sooty paper, is both comfortingly reliable and astonishing. thom barthelmess (c) Copyright 2015. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A young narrator says goodnight to his cat, Sylvie, who later wakes him to beckon him to an adventure in the early hours. In Gerstein's pen, ink, and acrylic art against gray paper, the night world of hallway, sleeping family, front walk, and garden is recognizableyet everything is shadowed and quiet. When child and cat step out of the house, a stippling of bright stars across the night sky echoes the sweeping Milky Way reproduced on the endpapers. Gerstein's darkness has softness and depth: here the night world is benign, and for all its strangeness, it is simply, though possibly magically, different. The narrator hears animal voices expressing expectation ("It's almost here"); he speaks with his cat and with a porcupine on his front lawn. He hears the increasing volume of birdsong; the sky pales with light; a bear in the shadows slips away as the dawn arrives. Children lucky enough to experience a summer night in the countryor even the suburbswithout artificial light may get to experience this arrival of early morning, which has its own fanfare: at first mysterious, then spectacular, bold, bright. Gerstein's morning sky practically sings its own hymn. Everything in the young protagonist's world looks different in the daytime: the front walkway, bright roses, and sunflowers. A beautifully realized and delightful celebration of night and sunrise. (Picture book. 3-7) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
