Fireflies at Midnight
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Overview
A robin cheerfully greets the day at dawn.
A horse nibbles grass under the heat of the midday sun.
A rabbit stands still, disappearing into the grass at dusk.
As evening falls, a frog tells the world that he's the king of the pond.
During one summer day, these and other creatures tell their tales, celebrating their ordinary — but extraordinary — lives in verse. Young readers will be entranced by the many voices created by renowned poet Marilyn Singer. They will be encouraged to look more closely at the surprising world around them — morning, noon, and night.
Synopsis
A robin cheerfully greets the day at dawn.
A horse nibbles grass under the heat of the midday sun.
A rabbit stands still, disappearing into the grass at dusk.
As evening falls, a frog tells the world that he's the king of the pond.
During one summer day, these and other creatures tell their tales, celebrating their ordinary — but extraordinary — lives in verse. Young readers will be entranced by the many voices created by renowned poet Marilyn Singer. They will be encouraged to look more closely at the surprising world around them — morning, noon, and night.
Publishers Weekly
In Fireflies at Midnight by Marilyn Singer, a summer day unfolds through the voices of various animals, from a robin at dawn ("Up cheerup I'm up/ Let me be first to greet the light"), to a bat ("I hear/ I see/ the night"), to a mole the following dawn ("In the beneath/ it is mole time/ the whole time"). Ken Robbins's photorealistic art brings each animal into an up-close, often soft focus. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
In Fireflies at Midnight by Marilyn Singer, a summer day unfolds through the voices of various animals, from a robin at dawn ("Up cheerup I'm up/ Let me be first to greet the light"), to a bat ("I hear/ I see/ the night"), to a mole the following dawn ("In the beneath/ it is mole time/ the whole time"). Ken Robbins's photorealistic art brings each animal into an up-close, often soft focus. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.Children's Literature
Fourteen hauntingly beautiful poems allow various different animals to share glimpses of their lives with the reader, each one focusing on some captured moment of the day, from dawn to dusk to midnight and back to dawn again. We meet an otter enjoying early-morning play: "It starts with the slide/ with the mud/ with the ride/ Then the splash/ and the dip/ and the flip/ and the glide." Patient ants work together to drag home an enormous fallen leaf: "One and one and one and one/ is the best way/ to get things done." A red eft slowly crosses the street, safe in the knowledge that "I have four steady legs/ few enemies/ and all the time/ in the world." At dark a bat closes in on his prey: "Mosquitoes swarm/ I ride a breeze/ The air is warm/ I hear/I see/ I fly I find/ I near/ I seize." Each poem offers the reader one of those wonderful shivery moments when the words click into place in some unforgettable image that seems absolutely inevitable and right. Robbins' accompanying full-page illustrations have the same quality of perfectly catching a fleeting moment that otherwise would have disappeared forever. 2003, Atheneum,— Claudia Mills