Night Creatures: Animals That Swoop, Crawl, and Creep While You Sleep

Gr 1-3–A mother and young child are camping in their backyard. As the sun sets, during an ideal summer night, many creatures will make themselves known over the course of the campout. The parade starts with fireflies, followed by a lynx just missing a rabbit dinner, then a skunk family arrives, and finally a raccoon reaches into the shallows of a pond. A great horned owl swoops silently by catching a mouse while deer begin to appear at the edges of the meadow. The arrival of a noisy robin heralds the morning. The mother and child return home where a father and younger sibling await on the porch. The family presents as African American. A simple poem accompanies richly painted illustrations. The book’s final two pages devote greater detail about each animal. Thumbnail illustrations accompanied by a paragraph of information divide the animals into crepuscular, nocturnal, and diurnal. Unfortunately, the book seems too simple on the front end and too complex on the back end. It might work one-on-one with an interested listener as opposed to a group read aloud. Better choices for the target audience might be The Night World by Mordicai Gerstein and Night Animals by Gianna Marino.