What color is night?

What color is night? / Is it only black... / and white? So begins an evocative picture book that urges young viewers to look closer at the nightto see, for example, the golden glow of fireflies, the neon lights of the city, the silver of the Milky Way, the green of a raccoons eyes. Deeply saturated double-page spreads use inky dark backgrounds to effectively highlight those pops of color and light. And though it is the striking art that may rivet a child audiences attention, the text, with its soothing rhythms and strong near-rhymes full of rich long vowels (road / glow), is an equal partner. The shivery, otherworldly quality of both art and text ramps up at the end, where the little girl we initially saw looking out her window into the darkness dreams of flying through the sky in a hot-air balloon, soaring above pink and purple clouds into a night of good dreams. Pair this with Mordicai Gersteins The Night World (rev. 5/15) to show the dark as something to explore and appreciate, not fear. Martha V. Parravano March/April 2020 p.72(c) Copyright 2020. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

If you think the night is black, think again.Snider's elegant nocturnal idyll explores the many colors visible to those who "look closer." The dark blue sky, "a big yellow moon beginning to rise," the glow of red neon in the city and of faraway yellow headlights in the country, the glowing green eyes of raccoons on the prowlit turns out the night is fairly pulsing with colors. Thick ink outlines rooftops, sinuous tree branches, skyscrapers, moths, and more; the appropriately nighttime palette will have eyes straining a bit to see dark-gray outlines against dark-blue sky and black foreground shapes. For all that his shapes are simplified, at times even childlike in their line, the effect is startlingly realistic. The sky above the neon-lit city glows murky orange from the light below; in contrast, "a thousand silver stars spilled across the sky" are crystalline white against the navy-blue vastness above a quiet farm. Text is set primarily in gray and white against dark backgrounds, a large-font serif type ensuring legibility. The stately text and stillness of the images give the book a solemn air that is leavened with, first, "a midnight snack" of Lucky Charms and then a dream balloon flight that takes a brown-skinned child with long puffy hair over a sea of "pink and purple clouds."This will have young readers hoping to stay up for a glimpse of "colors unseen." (Picture book. 3-6) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.