Night Driving

A warm-hearted portrait of a simple event that encapsulates the bond between a father and a son.

This warm and thoughtful story about a father and son on an all-night drive to the mountains is just right for Father's Day.

Publishers Weekly

Mood replaces plot in Coy's debut book, which describes a father and son's all-night road trip in the '50s. Action is spare and archetypal: they see a deer, fix a flat, stop for breakfast at a diner. The author establishes the sweetness of the father/son relationship, but doesn't offer much meat in his storytelling. McCarty's (Frozen Man) soft pencil illustrations look like black-and-white photos blurred and bleached by the passage of time; even so, they seem to glow with the refracted beams from the car's headlights. There is a quiet, insistent power to the art, but the sensibility is almost implacably adult. Kids will likely be frustrated by the limited ability of black-and-white illustrations to represent such references as the sun setting "in a mix of orange and pink." While this treatmentand this topicmay nourish the nostalgia of parents, the primary audience may be asking, "Are we there yet?" long before the end of the drive. Ages 4-7. (Sept.)

John Coy remembers the thrill of staying awake with his father on family road trips to the mountains. He now passes this love of night driving on to his daughter. A native of Minnesota, John Coy works as a writing teacher in St. Paul. This is his first picture book.

Peter McCarty has never forgotten his first road trip that took him to twenty states in twenty-eight days. His whirlwind drive through the country provided the inspiration for these drawings.

A graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Peter McCarty is the illustrator of Frozen Man by David Getz. He makes his picture-book debut with Night Driving.