There’s a lot to like about The Night World, from Caldecott medalist Mordicai Gerstein. Unlike your esteemed leaders here at Calling Caldecott, I’ve never been on the Caldecott committee, but if I were, this book would be in my serious-consideration stack.
Let’s start with the dust jacket. It welcomes readers with a window, as a boy and his cat stare out at the night sky. We are behind them. It’s very inviting: Come see what we’re seeing. The shadows and the darkness also immediately establish a tone of mystery, but I don’t think it’s scary. There’s abundant wonder and even a sense of peacefulness.
Be sure to look at the dust-jacket spine, with its tiny illustration of the profile of a cat with shining green eyes. This cat, we learn later, is the very creature who wakes the boy and invites him outside, guiding the night-world adventure. The back of the jacket has a second window, also open, also inviting the reader in. There’s a slogan of sorts printed on the back: “What secrets does the night world hold?” I don’t know if slogan is the right word. I see these more and more on picture books, front and back. I’m not fond of them. I’d rather leave it to the artist to do the work to draw the reader in to the story — not advertising one-liners and the like, as if the book were laundry detergent sitting on a shelf. Is this a trend that will go away? I don’t know. Am I being unreasonable? Perhaps.
Take off the jacket, and you’ll see a different cover illustration of the boy, the cat, and the Milky Way: silhouettes for our characters; white eyes for the boy; shining green eyes for the cat; and white stars. All else is blackness. They stare in wonder. We also see this Milky Way sweeping across the endpapers, both front and back.
Gerstein gets right to work telling the story. Even before the copyright and title page, there’s an illustration establishing that the boy is going to sleep, as he bids Sylvie (the cat’s name, we learn) good night, and through that open window we see colors fading as the sun sets. On the title page, it’s completely dark, and we see the boy sleeping. On the next several expertly paced spreads, Sylvie wakes the boy, inviting him outside into the “night world” (“It’s too late to go out, Sylvie … or is it too early?”). They tiptoe through the dark house. Gerstein builds the tension well.
With each double-page spread, as they make their cautious way toward the back yard, the space containing the illustrations shrinks. As soon as they step outside, into the night world, the illustrations expand to fill whole double-page spreads. The illustrations grow as the night world grows. “There are shadows everywhere.” That Gerstein keeps the night-time world interesting is no small feat — especially once they’ve reach the back yard. “Where are their colors?” the boy asks of the flowers. It’s all shadows and outlines, and Gerstein uses negative space, the empty areas around his objects, to help define them. As the sun rises — which is precisely what Sylvie wanted the boy to see — the glow builds, colors blossom, and the “sun bursts.” This Dorothy-in-the-land-of-Oz moment is damn near glorious, and readers then see the relaxed, energetic lines of Gerstein’s artwork. But it’s those acrylics and colored pencils that really shine. Quite literally.
In a nice touch on the final spread, we see the nocturnal creatures sleeping in the shadows of bushes along the bottom edges of the pages. But Sylvie (who has successfully evangelized the new day) and the boy will have none of that: “It’s going to be a beautiful day!” the boy yells as they both run inside.
A closing author’s note on the final endpapers (no wasted space here) is short and sweet. Gerstein recalls a memory, at age four, of seeing his back yard at night and how foreign it appeared. “I’ve also been a great watcher of sunrises,” he closes; “to me, they are like watching the creation of the world.”
Will the committee choose a story that spends most of its time in shadows, employing a dark, gray-black palette? It’s not like there isn’t a record of books with night-time palettes garnering Caldecott love. A few examples: John Rocco’s Blackout (2012 Honor), The House in the Night, illustrated by Beth Krommes (2009 Medal), and Kevin Henkes’s Kitten’s First Full Moon (2005 Medal). Is it easy to overlook how hard it is to keep a book with limited color interesting?
Have you seen this one? I hope you have. What do you think?
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