Where Does the Night Hide?. This item is unavailable.Where Does the Night Hide?

On a trip to town with her mama, a little girl finds many dark places where pieces of the night are hiding, in the cracks of market stalls, under the sidewalk grate, and in the fur of a mother cat.

PreSchool-- Misty, nostalgic illustrations in charcoal, pastel, and colored pencil on textured paper depict a little girl and her mother as they board a bus to the city. There they stop at an open-air market, peer into the window of a pet shop, and share a snack on a park bench. The poemlike text appears beneath each white-bordered picture. Alternating drawings show a slice of moon rising in a star-studded sky over the city skyline, with the title question on the opposing page. The Allens' night hides in the dark places--both curious and scary--that children notice: the shadow under a bus, the dark walls of a tunnel, dim alleys, the pitch black chasm under a sidewalk grate. They also see it in the fur of a black cat and in the little girl's folded hands. Carlstrom's poem is disturbing. In her attempt to soften a young child's fears of the dark, night becomes a name for shadow, shade, and darkness, and even the color black. If the text is meant to represent one child's game (looking for the night), this is not depicted in the illustrations. The appealing idea of the night hiding during the day is presented here in an inaccurate, confusing manner. --Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.