The House in the Night: A Caldecott Award Winner

This book is recommend for ages 4-8, but my two year old loves it. I read it to her at bed time, and she can recite the last word of every page. This book has beautiful pictures and nice poetry. It would make great gifts for toddlers.

The illustrations are fabulously rich and textured; the story is simple and comforting. Highly original and effective use of color -- only black, white, and golden yellow. We checked this out from the library, and my 5-year-old loves it. Truth be told, I probably love it even more. I'll be buying a copy for our family and several more as gifts.

This is one of the most beautiful picture books of the year. The contrast of the black and yellow throughout the book amplifies the book's theme of the light and comfort that can be found at night. A perfect book to read to a baby or toddler to alleviate their fears of the darkness. Truly a lovely book.

Sometimes, just sometimes, you want to read a beautiful picture book. Not a pretty picture book or a mildly lovely one or a picture book that will please you the first ten times you read it to a child and then hardly anymore after that. No, I'm talking about a jaw-dropping, kick-you-in-the-pants, douse your cigar hussy of a beautiful picture book. The kind that works against your book-loving instincts, tempting you to rip out the pages and frame them on your wall. That kind of book. The first time I saw an ad for "The House in the Night" by Susan Marie Swanson and Beth Krommes I wanted it. Generally scratchboard art doesn't appeal to me, but there's something different about this title. Gentle bedtime reading, consider this a book that is designed to illuminate a child's dreams. Inspired by a cumulative poem found in The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book, Swanson's words are short simple. "Here is the key to the house / In the house burns a light / In that light rests a bed." As we read, a small child places the key on a hook as a dog, a cat, and some kittens mill about. She walks into the room and spots a book on the bed. "In that book flies a bird." As the text grows expansive, discussing the bird's song, the girl imagines taking a trip on its back above the land, "Through the dark", past the moon, and the sun, and the sky. In the end she goes to bed, not far from the key in, "the house in the night, a home full of light." The shape of the story allows it to go from a small intimate story to an exciting flight around the world, and then back to bed where the little girl curls up cozily and falls asleep. It's a tribute to bedtime stories themselves, without ever being blunt about its potential applications. Last year I fell in love with a different cumulative poem called The Apple Pie That Papa Baked by Lauren Thompson with illustrations by Jonathan Bean. Like this book, "Apple Pie" used the cumulative format to draw back farther and farther, to the point where the story becomes positively cosmic. Here, Swanson's text has a comforting feel to it, helped in no small part by its universal images. She's as good a picture book author as she is partly because her words give an illustrator room to get a little creative. The first name to pop to mind, even before you open the book, is "Wanda Gag". The illustrator of such storytime classics as Millions of Cats appears to have had a direct influence on Krommes' style. I first discovered Ms. Krommes when she lent her considerable talents to Joyce Sidman's, Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow. She is recognizably the same person who has worked on "The House in the Night" but this particular book feels like someone took a photograph of her earlier work and made it into a negative image. Krommes uses a scratchboard style with watercolor. In fact he only color in this book is the singular yellow of the sun, the moon, the stars, and other key points in the pictures. Individual c

This will become a classic good night book. The illustrations are wonderful & the story a delight. Each page has treasures to explore. This book will be on my "buy 10" and give out as presents all year list.