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LIGHTS AT NIGHT

Name: LIGHTS AT NIGHT
Author: Tasha Hilderman
ISBN: 9781774881149

by Tasha Hilderman ; illustrated by Maggie Zeng ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 5, 2025

Comforting and snoozy, just right for bedtime reading.

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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)

Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025

ISBN: 9781774881149

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Tundra Books

Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025

Categories:

CHILDREN'S FAMILY | CHILDREN'S HOLIDAYS & CELEBRATIONS | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
MÉTIS LIKE ME
by Tasha Hilderman ; illustrated by Risa Hugo

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HALLOWEEN IS COMING!

by Cal Everett ; illustrated by Lenny Wen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2021

High-quality, inclusive illustrations make this one stand out.

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From the changing season to decorations and costumes, children anticipate Halloween.

Little readers will enjoy all of the familiar markers of the season included in this book: falling leaves, jack-o’-lanterns, Halloween costumes, candy, and trick-or-treating. Everett’s rhyming couplets bob along safely, offering nothing that will wow but enough to keep the pages turning. It’s Wen’s illustrations that give the most to readers, full of bustling scenes and lovely details. A double-page spread of the children in town in front of the candy store includes jars with individually drawn treats and other festive delicacies. The townwide celebration features instruments, creative costumes, and a diverse crowd of people. There are three children who appear as the focus of the illustrations, though there are many secondary characters. One bespectacled White child is drawn in a manual wheelchair, another has dark brown skin, the third presents Asian. The child in the wheelchair is shown as a full participant. Readers will enjoy spotting spooks like a vampire, goblin, and werewolf, as they sometimes appear in the background and other times blend in with the crowd. The familiar trappings of Halloween paired with the robust illustrations will have little readers wanting to reread even if the content itself is not startlingly new.

High-quality, inclusive illustrations make this one stand out. (Picture book. 3-5)

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-7282-0586-1

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky

Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HOLIDAYS & CELEBRATIONS

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HAPPY EASTER FROM THE CRAYONS

by Drew Daywalt ; illustrated by Oliver Jeffers ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 7, 2023

Let these crayons go back into their box.

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The Crayons return to celebrate Easter.

Six crayons (Red, Orange, Yellow, Esteban, who is green and wears a yellow cape, White, and Blue) each take a shape and scribble designs on it. Purple, perplexed and almost angry, keeps asking why no one is creating an egg, but the six friends have a great idea. They take the circle decorated with red shapes, the square adorned with orange squiggles “the color of the sun,” the triangle with yellow designs, also “the color of the sun” (a bit repetitious), a rectangle with green wavy lines, a white star, about which Purple remarks: “DID you even color it?” and a rhombus covered with blue markings and slap the shapes onto a big, light-brown egg. Then the conversation turns to hiding the large object in plain sight. The joke doesn’t really work, the shapes are not clear enough for a concept book, and though colors are delineated, it’s not a very original color book. There’s a bit of clever repartee. When Purple observe that Esteban’s green rectangle isn’t an egg, Esteban responds, “No, but MY GOSH LOOK how magnificent it is!” Still, that won’t save this lackluster book, which barely scratches the surface of Easter, whether secular or religious. The multimedia illustrations, done in the same style as the other series entries, are always fun, but perhaps it’s time to retire these anthropomorphic coloring implements. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Let these crayons go back into their box. (Picture book. 3-5)