Review by New York Times Review
WHEN I WAS 5, I knew that everything interesting happened after we were sent to bed. Adults brought out chocolates with fancy centers, drank liqueurs from tiny glasses, told jokes they didn't want us to hear. My brother and I would lie in our beds fuming with indignation at being excluded from the nocturnal world of grownups, determined to stay awake and spy on them, until invariably our bodies betrayed us with sleep. Three new nighttime, but not necessarily bedtime, books explore in turn comical, comforting and unsettling nocturnal worlds. With its rhythmic onomatopoeia, cacophony of fonts and screeching palette, everything about "Noisy Night," by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Brian Biggs, is gleefully loud. A child is woken by sounds coming from upstairs. "What is going LA LA LA above my head?" We see a cross-section slice of the floor above: a glimpse of dapper shoes and coattails. A page turn shows an opera singer belting out an aria. But wait, what's going MA MA MA above his head? Each entertaining spread reveals a different noisy tenant and a new mystery to be solved. Who or what is going HAW HAW HAW, CAW CAW CAW or RAH RAH RAH? Page by page, floor by floor we discover a diverse bunch of residents in a city apartment building, laughing, cheering, dancing, or in the case of a sheep, talking to themselves, until we reach the BLAH BLAH BLAH coming from the top floor. An old man is hollering for everyone to go to sleep. And they do. Presumably. (We never see the child again. Possibly he's lying awake fuming.) There's a lot to enjoy in Biggs's illustrations. I appreciate the impeccable continuity in the details, the infectious joy of the cowboys, the mixed genders of the cheerleaders. I can't help wishing, though, that the form of the book was more playful. I'm thinking of Peter Newell's "The Rocket Book" from 1912, which is also a journey from a basement to the top floor of a building, connected by a die-cut hole that disrupts each page and its inhabitants. I wanted to turn "Noisy Night" 90 degrees counterclockwise in the beginning so we might rise vertically through the apartment. But small children probably won't be so demanding. Instead they'll enjoy returning to the cover to pick out each character in the building, no doubt noisily resisting their own bedtimes. CONSIDERABLY QUIETER, Akiko Miyakoshi's "The Way Home in the Night" begins with a sleepy rabbit child being carried through empty city streets in its mother's arms. There is something immensely comforting in viewing the world over a parent's shoulder. When I was 7, I feigned sleep in the car so that my father might lift me out and carry me inside, knowing deep in my bones that this ritual would soon end. (Partly because I was getting too big, partly because my parents were getting divorced.) In Miyakoshi's subdued text, originally written in Japanese, we encounter the sounds, smells and sights of an urban neighborhood at day's end, observed by a family on their way home. In her tender illustrations we see a grainy, charcoal night, punctured with windows of soft light, populated by figures with human forms and gentle animal heads. Somehow her characters, which defy racial and gender stereotypes, are poignantly, heartbreakingly human. They are preparing dinner, watching TV, answering the phone. Staring wistfully at photographs as they brush their teeth. Hugging their favorite one goodbye. When mother and child are almost home, the father joins them. The child is transferred to his arms, and even though we see the threesome only from behind, I imagine the mother's simultaneous relief and sorrow. I remember staggering under the weight of my sleepy, long-limbed son, wanting to put him down to walk, knowing that day would come soon enough. "The Way Home in the Night" is a small story set in the shadowy, philosophical time before sleep - the end of the day when we consider what we achieved, if the hours were well spent, what on earth we're all doing here. I can't help thinking that reading a picture book like this with a child at bedtime could redeem any day. STILL RESISTING SLEEP at 11, I would sit up for hours each night, filling notebooks with self-conscious confessions in alternating colored pens, falling asleep before I put all the lids back on. In Lorena Alvarez's beautiful, strange, enticing graphic novel, "Nightlights," the moments before sleep are magical. Lying in the dark, a lonely, wide-eyed girl called Sandy catches floating bubbles of light and transforms them into enchanting flowers and birds, dewdrops and sea creatures. Come daytime during recess, she draws this vivid world in her notebooks, away from the surveillance of the nuns at her Catholic girls' school. Habitually alone, she nonetheless makes a friend one day in the yard. The new girl, Morfie, admires Sandy's doodles, but with her pale eyes, silvery mauve hair and ready compliments, Morfie is a little creepy. That's even before she appears in Sandy's room, or perhaps her dreams, that night, asserting a cloying control over Sandy and literally devouring her drawings. Sandy must weigh her desire for a friend against her artistic freedom, and eventually, she cleverly draws herself out of a dangerous underworld and back into the light. This delightfully unsettling tale is told with humor and imagination and is illustrated with jewel-like panels and lots of white space. There are rewarding details to be found in every scene, especially in the lush landscapes, both real and imagined, and in the drawings within drawings. The palette embraces purples, from berries to bruises, but even in the unnerving scene where Morfie entices Sandy out of the house at night, there's an underpants joke to keep things from becoming too menacing. Young readers, especially young artists, will gobble this up. Having resisted sleep my entire childhood, I now chase it with middle-age desperation. Thank goodness for the company of books. ? SOPHIE BLACKALL has written and illustrated many books for young readers, including "Finding Winnie," winner of the 2016 Caldecott Medal.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 9, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* One of the problems of high-rise living is getting a good night's sleep with all those noisy neighbors. On the first floor, a little one can't get her rest, because something is going LaLaLa above her head. Two legs partially visible on the floor above hint at what's to come. Turn the page and a frizzy-haired mustachioed opera singer is practicing an aria. On ascending floors, a baby noisily coos (MaMaMa), cowboys laugh (HawHawHaw), cheerleaders leap (RahRahRah), and so on. Top floor? A pajama-clad bearded curmudgeon angrily shouts, Go to bed! The last page (ZZZ) shows the old man finally sleeping soundly in a blue-black room. The fun is seeing the clues at the top of each page and guessing who or what the next noisemakers will be. Barnett cleverly packs a punch with his spare text as he builds each surprise up to a humorous crescendo. Biggs' enticing cover is an homage to Chicago Imagist artist Roger Brown, whose distinctive painting style often depicts nocturnal cityscapes with black silhouettes of people glimpsed through windows of apartment buildings. Children will want to return to this witty cover to catch glimpses of all the characters they've met ascending from floor to floor. The interior's bright pages explode with color illustrating the various sound-makers gleefully going about their cacophonous activities.--Gepson, Lolly Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
It's late, and no one is being very neighborly in the apartment building at the center of this unruly story. A well-matched Barnett (The Magic Word) and Biggs (Tinyville Town Gets to Work!) start on the first floor, where a kid is awakened by noise from the apartment above. "What is going la la la above my head?" the boy asks. The answer is revealed on the next spread: "A man is singing opera above my head." This pattern repeats for on each of the building's 10 floors, with disturbances at each stop ("rah rah rah" "cha cha cha"), until a cranky old man in the top apartment shuts the whole thing down with an emphatic "Go to bed!" Funky choices in color, texture, and typography lend an appropriate devil-may-care air to Biggs's spreads, and he cleverly teases each successive vignette by letting a slice of it peek through, like film caught between frames. The improbable cast-which includes a sheep, pair of cowboys, and a cheerleading squad-and their percussive exclamations will elicit plenty of bedtime chuckles. Ages 4-8. Agent: Steven Malk, Writers House. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 1-This rousing selection opens with a boy being kept awake by sounds coming from the apartment above his bedroom. The lad wonders what is going on. The audible commotion stems from a man singing opera, who, in turn, wonders about sounds above his head. This leads to a lively chain of characters, each on subsequent levels of a high-rise building, producing noise and then musing about the sounds they hear from above. These additional noises are in turn produced by a baby, sheep, cowboys, a young trumpet player, a crow, cheerleaders, dancers, and, finally, an old man directing them to go to bed. This title invites audience participation; young listeners can chime in with the swift, repetitive text or by reproducing the variety of sound effects. The book's cover nicely establishes the night setting and offers readers a good sense of where the story takes place. Spirited cartoonish illustrations enhance the mood by visually magnifying the evening chaos described in the text. Children's curiosity will be piqued by illustrations with partial glimpses at floors above; these images allow readers or listeners a chance to predict who or what might be making the noises. Vibrant oranges, yellows, greens, blues, purples, and reds stand out against the heavy black lines used to separate apartment floors. Attention given to artwork details can be seen in the patterned wallpaper, which varies from floor to floor. VERDICT The writing style and energetic illustrations tell an amusing tale that will be a rollicking bedtime or storytime read-aloud.-Lynn Vanca, Freelance Librarian, Akron, OH © Copyright 2017. 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
On the dark night of the book's cover, bright colors indicate lively scenes inside the windows of a ten-story apartment building, while tiny silhouettes hold clues to the antics occurring on each floor. Opening the book takes readers and viewers inside the first floor, where a boy lies awake: "What is going LA LA LA above my head?" Clever book design reveals just a sliver of the second floor, creating an opportunity to guess what might be happening above the ceiling. Turning the page frames the scene higher, revealing the answer: "A man is singing opera above my head." Then a bit of the third floor appears because a sound from up there is aggravating the opera singer. Up and up the book goes, with noisy surprises to discover on every level (sheep, cowboys, cheerleaders) until a dancing couple ("cha cha cha") on floor nine wonders: "What is going BLAH BLAH BLAH above our heads?" The tenth floor's resident, an old man, is hollering "GO TO BED!" which seems to work--the light from the floor below clicks off. The high energy and bright contrasts from the bold cartoon drawings, along with the call-and-response question-and-answer format of the text, create a wild and interactive read aloud. julie roach (c) Copyright 2017. 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.
