This book offers an age-old tune with new words. A title that doesn't leave your heart or mind any too soon. Does anyone remember it?" And I have faith that children's librarians will be able to answer these questions readily, keeping the beloved book close at hand. It took place at night and there was yellow. Fifty years from now libraries and websites will be filled with queries from people asking, "There's this book I've been trying to find from years. What "The House in the Night" has in its favor is the ability to stick with a person. That isn't to say that they won't also find the pictures engrossing. The kind of story you pick up and read when the child wants something to put them to sleep. The real question: Will the kids dig it? As I've mentioned before, this is a bedtime book. "The House in the Night" will go the same route. "Round Trip" is one of those books that stick with you the rest of your life. There's something about seeing a nightscape in black and white, particularly from a distance, which conjures up similar sensations. Oddly enough, while Wanda Gag was certainly the first illustrator to come to mind when I read this, the feel of the book reminded me particularly of that wonderful Ann Jonas book Round Trip. And her use of yellow at meticulous moments lends loveliness to images that might have appeared too harsh. This is a bedtime tale that takes into account the vastness of space and the curve of the landscapes below. But for all her charms, Gag never illustrated a book with as much depth and scope as found in this story. Individual creatures bear the mark of Gag, particularly Krommes' cats which appear to be a direct ode. In fact he only color in this book is the singular yellow of the sun, the moon, the stars, and other key points in the pictures. Krommes uses a scratchboard style with watercolor. She is recognizably the same person who has worked on "The House in the Night" but this particular book feels like someone took a photograph of her earlier work and made it into a negative image. Krommes when she lent her considerable talents to Joyce Sidman's, Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow. The illustrator of such storytime classics as Millions of Cats appears to have had a direct influence on Krommes' style. The first name to pop to mind, even before you open the book, is "Wanda Gag". She's as good a picture book author as she is partly because her words give an illustrator room to get a little creative. Here, Swanson's text has a comforting feel to it, helped in no small part by its universal images. Like this book, "Apple Pie" used the cumulative format to draw back farther and farther, to the point where the story becomes positively cosmic. Last year I fell in love with a different cumulative poem called The Apple Pie That Papa Baked by Lauren Thompson with illustrations by Jonathan Bean. It's a tribute to bedtime stories themselves, without ever being blunt about its potential applications. In the end she goes to bed, not far from the key in, "the house in the night, a home full of light." The shape of the story allows it to go from a small intimate story to an exciting flight around the world, and then back to bed where the little girl curls up cozily and falls asleep. "In that book flies a bird." As the text grows expansive, discussing the bird's song, the girl imagines taking a trip on its back above the land, "Through the dark", past the moon, and the sun, and the sky. She walks into the room and spots a book on the bed. "Here is the key to the house / In the house burns a light / In that light rests a bed." As we read, a small child places the key on a hook as a dog, a cat, and some kittens mill about. Inspired by a cumulative poem found in The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book, Swanson's words are short simple. Gentle bedtime reading, consider this a book that is designed to illuminate a child's dreams. Generally scratchboard art doesn't appeal to me, but there's something different about this title. The first time I saw an ad for "The House in the Night" by Susan Marie Swanson and Beth Krommes I wanted it. The kind that works against your book-loving instincts, tempting you to rip out the pages and frame them on your wall. No, I'm talking about a jaw-dropping, kick-you-in-the-pants, douse your cigar hussy of a beautiful picture book. Not a pretty picture book or a mildly lovely one or a picture book that will please you the first ten times you read it to a child and then hardly anymore after that. Sometimes, just sometimes, you want to read a beautiful picture book.
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