Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Following an East Asian--cued family, Hilderman's evocative first-person-plural prose and Zeng's painterly digital artwork characterize the four seasons via emblematic "lights at night" in this satisfying springtide-to-wintertide tour. Amid a spring rainstorm in which "lightning cracks and electrifies the night," the subjects race home, then read by flashlight when the power goes out. Summer brings a campfire "sending sparks like fireflies," while autumn involves a Halloween jaunt in which "we crack glow sticks." Throughout, a fox and its growing cubs shadow their human counterparts--lapping at lake water that simultaneously reflects summertime fireworks, and later seeming to leap from a wintertime northern lights display, before their "eyeshine" is caught in the family's vehicle headlights during a drive through snow flurries. Highlighted with the help of page-filling art and poetic lines, night lights offer an ideal and innovative angle onto the pleasures of a northern clime's seasons. Background characters are portrayed with various abilities and skin tones. Ages 3--7. (Aug.)
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Review by School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 3--Two children and their parents travel through dusk and night and seasons observing lights, accompanied by a fox and her kits in the background. Beginning with a spring storm as the family drives home, "Street lamps turn on, one, two, three. Red light, green light, yellow light, red." The power goes out as the children go to bed. A summer camping trip shows firelight and fireworks at a lake. Fall brings golden afternoons and nights with football. Then winter's aurora borealis shimmers as "circles under the dancers in the sky" appear. The flowing text begins and ends with simple sentences that blossom then retreat from more descriptive paragraphs. The narrative begins and ends at night with the siblings at home and the foxes outside. The human and fox families' parallel lives are drawn in lush, darkly colored pages, with most spreads in an impressionistic style. Lights for various holidays appear in the decorations of homes. Near the end of the story, fox images are outlined in the night sky. The end pages have a fox nightlight at the front and a light switch with glowing stickers at the back. The family's skin and hair color--dark hair, tan skin--may imply they are Metís, like the author, but many different ethnicities would find themselves reflected in the pages of this book. VERDICT A lovely look at fox and human families as they enjoy the changing lights and nature. Perfect for cozy bedtime stories.--Tamara Saarinen
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A sleepy seasonal ode to the lights that shine after the sun goes down. Puddles glimmer beneath streetlights as a spring rainstorm chases a suburban family indoors--just in time for the power to go out. While the family shares a cozy bedtime story by flashlight indoors, in the fields outside a fox with two new cubs ventures out beneath the stars. In later months, campfires and Fourth of July fireworks give way to jack-o'-lanterns, after-school football games beneath the lights, nights spent ice-skating beneath shimmering auroral curtains, a holiday get-together at year's end, and, on the journey home, glimpses of falling snow and shiny fox eyes in the headlights beneath passing trees. The lights, both natural and artificial, cast such warm glows that even in darker scenes, the shadows are never deep in Zeng's peaceful, idyllic layouts. As she follows an East Asian--presenting human family and a furry four-footed one through the seasons, she tucks in grace notes, from foxlike swirls of sky mist to symbolic candles for Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Hanukkah, on the way to final looks inside and outside: "Lights out. / Night light. / Good night." Comforting and snoozy, just right for bedtime reading.(Picture book. 3-5) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
