Review of the Day: The House in the Night

The House in the Night
By Susan Marie Swanson
Illustrated by Beth Krommes
Houghton Mifflin Company
$17.00
ISBN: 978-0-618-86244-3
Ages 4-8
On shelves now

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 creatures bear the mark of Gag, particularly Krommes’ cats which appear to be a direct ode. But for all her charms, Gag never illustrated a book with as much depth and scope as found in this story. This is a bedtime tale that takes into account the vastness of space and the curve of the landscapes below. And her use of yellow at meticulous moments lends loveliness to images that might have appeared too harsh.

Oddly enough, while Wanda Gag was certainly the first illustrator to come to mind when I read this, the feel of the book reminded me particularly of that wonderful Ann Jonas book Round Trip. There’s something about seeing a nightscape in black and white, particularly from a distance, which conjures up similar sensations. Round Trip is one of those books that stick with you the rest of your life. The House in the Night will go the same route.

The real question: Will the kids dig it? As I’ve mentioned before, this is a bedtime book. The kind of story you pick up and read when the child wants something to put them to sleep. That isn’t to say that they won’t also find the pictures engrossing. What The House in the Night has in its favor is the ability to stick with a person. Fifty years from now libraries and websites will be filled with queries from people asking, "There’s this book I’ve been trying to find from years. It took place at night and there was yellow . . . it was really gorgeous. Does anyone remember it?" And I have faith that children’s librarians will be able to answer these questions readily, keeping the beloved book close at hand. A title that doesn’t leave your heart or mind any too soon.

Other Blog Reviews: Book of the Day, A Patchwork of Books, and one at Kids Lit that has mysteriously disappeared.