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Yuyi Morales,
Little Night
Roaring Brook Press, 2007.
Ages 2-6
What child doesn't run the other way when a parent says it's time for bed? Yuyi Morales' playful, gorgeous new picture book delightfully captures the bedtime dance between child and grownup. Our protagonist, Little Night, scampers inside and outside, hiding behind a chair, a blueberry bush, a hill, and finally behind her mama's copious skirts as she does her best to delay the inevitable bedtime routine.
Morales' earlier books Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez and her first author-illustrated book, Just a Minute: A Trickster Tale and Counting Book earned critical accolades for her illustrations. Here in Little Night, Morales' rich colors and mural-like sweeps across the page, dotted with calla lilies and adobe buildings, evoke the Mexican setting, while providing a magical depiction of the falling night as mama, Mother Sky, blends into the landscape. The customary glass of milk before bed is served to Little Night from a pitcher filled with stars from the Milky Way, producing a creamy mustache and a huge grin from our small subject.
Children will love Little Night's impish procrastinating and will wish they, too, had pajamas 'chrocheted from clouds'. They will be drawn to rubbing the page as if they could actually feel the fleecy white fabric rendered by the artist. Little Night's glossy dark skin glows from within as her mother gently pins a 'Venus on the east, Mercury on the west and Jupiter above' in her hair, as she untangles and smooths her hair.
Little Night is the perfect bedtime read aloud for young children. Each illustration stretches languidly over both pages as Little Night darts and hides, while the sunset colors deepen from fiery orange-reds to plummy violet with a sprinkling of stars at the close. The text relays the mother's cajoling in a gentle, easy tone as she patiently nudges Little Night through the motions of readying for bed. The final illustration is a sweet surprise since Little Night is not finally tucked in, as might be expected in a typical bedtime tale: instead she is allowed to play ball - with the moon!
The magic realism of Little Night is also available in a Spanish edition.
Kristen O. Daniel
September 2007
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