In the beguiling On a Summer Night, Deborah Hopkinson (Carter Reads the Newspaper; A Letter to My Teacher) and Kenard Pak (On the Horizon illustrator) eloquently showcase the hushed, magical wonder of a hot summer night.
A child wakes on a night so warm that "even the crickets think it's too hot to sing." The child walks through the house and explores the yard in moonlit shadows. Hopkins sets the story in a present-tense, second-person voice, asking: "What has woken you?" As the child explores inside and outside the home, the world comes alive. The cat sleeping on the table wakes and follows the protagonist, the dog across the street starts barking, a "sweet ribbon of breath" moves through the air, and one cloud sways in the sky. Separately, the child and cat take in the wonder of it all. "You breathe in the night, slow and quiet." When all settles, the child lifts the cat (who "tucks herself under your chin with a rumbly purr") and heads back to bed.
Hopkinson builds a cumulative tale with a series of questions about who wakes each thing: Who woke the cat? "Was it you?" This is followed by the introduction of the dog and: "Who has woken him? Was it the cat? Was it you?" This continues until readers are left wondering: Who woke the cloud? Was it the air, the tree, the rabbit, the dog, the cat, you? And who woke you? The story, tantalizingly, provides no answers. Hopkinson's text is evocative. She fills the book with bustling verbs (the cat "springs to her feet with a rasping mew!"); sensory, descriptive phrasing ("the dew tips blades of grass and silvers your toes"); vivid figurative language (the tree's leaves sway, "rustling like a silken gown"); and pleasing alliteration (the cat "slinks into the shadows").
Pak uses shadowy shades of plum, pine green, and slate to illustrate the brown-skinned child in a neighborhood by a body of water. Intentionally off-kilter compositions, as well as interstitial spreads with a moving band of growing light, accentuate the mystery of the night and its quiet surprises. In one spread, the left-hand side centers the text while, on the bottom right, just a small portion of the child's head is depicted, their strands of hair "still damp from sleep" the focal point. The moon shines on the strands, asking readers to marvel in its simple wonders on this very alive summer's night. --Julie Danielson, reviewer and copyeditor
Shelf Talker: In the beguiling On a Summer Night, Deborah Hopkinson and Kenard Pak invite readers to experience the quiet, magical wonder of night during a hot, hushed summer month.