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.
Kirkus 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.
