By Emily Rand

Tate Publishing ISBN: 9781849764810 Published on 7 Sept 2017

Age 3+

Review by Ren Renwick

If you love peeking into warmly lit windows as dusk descends on a city – glimpsing the lives that go on therein – this is an unavoidably alluring book for you. Emily Rand takes us from a little girl’s bedtime through the noises and activities of the night through to a bleary eyed morning. Late night revellers, workers, nocturnal animals, postmen and fast food delivery – it’s the cosy version of urban night life.

Each page has details that my five and three year old loved – foxes, mice, vacuum cleaners and mopeds. On every page there was something to talk about – from what night shift workers do through to why aeroplanes fly at night. (I now also know that my kids can hear us clinking glasses as we eat our dinner downstairs.) I imagine that for children it at once makes you feel safely snuggled in your bed away from the teeming life outside, and a little bit intrigued as to what adult world goes on when you are asleep.

The words are entirely secondary to the images – I wonder if they are needed at all, so strong and rich is the visual narrative. Both five and three year old seemed less interested in what I was reading, than in pointing things out to me, though my three year old decided that it ‘sounded nice too’.

You know a book is a winner when there is a flight about who gets to take it to read in bed – but most importantly it’s something that I want to look at over and over again.

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