In the Night Garden

by Carin Berger (Author)

Reading Level: 2nd − 3rd Grade

A gentle, collage-illustrated bedtime read about the often mysterious and always beautiful experiences to be found in nighttime spaces.

In the night garden fireflies look like fallen stars. Moonflowers unfurl and release their intoxicating perfume. In the night garden you can lie on the cool grass and look up to the millions and trillions of stars... In the night garden, nothing is as it seems and everything is made new. Blinking stars and pale moonlight might reveal a lone cat tiptoeing across a roof, luminous flowers unfurling in the cool air, a mama fox escorting her sleepy cubs home. Listen closely and you might hear the wind blowing through the trees, the murmur of a slow stream, or the gentle song of crickets and bullfrogs, lulling you to sleep.

Carin Berger is the award-winning author of The Little Yellow Leaf, a New York Times Best Illustrated Book. With soothing words and spectacularly detailed, hand-cut collage artwork, she has fashioned a bedtime book like no other. Curious readers will be rewarded when they look for the mysterious cat that appears on every page!

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

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Hardcover
$18.99

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Kirkus

Starred Review
Nighttime is the right time for young readers thanks to this perfect amalgamation of soothing text and image.

ALA/Booklist

Starred Review
In tandem, the text and art endow nighttime with a sense of whimsy and wonder, and for little ones readying for bed, they'll find comfort and reassurance for sweeter dreams.

Publishers Weekly

Starred Review

Using finely cut paper shapes to create a striking sequence of collaged spreads, Berger (A Curious Menagerie) meditates on the magic that unfolds around an ordinary house at night. Alongside a black cat, a gingham-clad child portrayed with brown skin stares up at the sky in an early spread: "In the night garden, you can lie on the cool grass and look up to the millions and trillions of stars." But it's the cat that subsequently threads its way through most of the book's spreads. The feline stalks behind brilliant white moonflowers that "unfurl and release their intoxicating perfume," becomes the face of a shooting star, bats at a firefly in a garden densely patterned with stylized flowers, and sits listening to a hoot owl "calling to you from a far-off tree." Alongside tranquil text, landscapes bear traces of mosaics, tapestry art, and William Morris prints, their layered components sometimes represented in snips of handwritten and printed pages. All the senses are engaged as, en route to a cozy "sleep tight," Berger presents the smells, the sounds, and the sights of nighttime as elegant, dazzling, and serene. Ages 3-6. (July)

Copyright 2023 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.

Review quotes



Classification
Fiction
ISBN-13
9780823449866
Lexile Measure
-
Guided Reading Level
-
Publisher
Neal Porter Books
Publication date
July 04, 2023
Series
-
BISAC categories
JUV010000 - Juvenile Fiction | Bedtime & Dreams
JUV009050 - Juvenile Fiction | Concepts | Senses & Sensation
JUV029040 - Juvenile Fiction | Science & Nature | Flowers & Plants
Library of Congress categories
Bedtime
Picture books
Night

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