From the Publisher
"A quietly alluring mood piece that focuses on the twilight times when at dawn and dusk, Fletcher finds impressionistic images that Kiesler makes concrete. . . . Words and art coalesce into an invitation to readers to move beyond the page and into their own explorations of twilight." Kirkus Reviews
Children's Literature
- Sheree Van Vreede
Dawn and dusk, the beginning and ending of every day. How we come to rely on these brief moments that bring each day full circle. Filled with an orange glow, this is a book about light. We are taught to appreciate these times and the memories associated with them. The illustrations are really the centerpiece of this work.
School Library Journal
PreS-Gr 2In spare, poetic prose, Fletcher describes the twilight of mornings and evenings, those two brief times of day that often seem to have magical qualities. He personifies dawn and dusk and uses images and metaphors to evoke their special qualities and events. The full- and double-paged oil paintings depict a suburban community. A young girl and her dog wander through the scenes, adding interest even though they are never mentioned in the text. Various shades of green, orange, and brown are used effectively to show how the colors of things are transformed by twilight. The personification of dawn and dusk seems strained, and the metaphors are sometimes more distracting than illuminating, e.g., dusk "pours/the syrup of darkness/into the forest" and "hisses on the sprinklers." The pictures speak more clearly than the words. Charlotte Zolotow's When the Wind Stops HarperCollins, 1995 and Jonathan London's I See the Moon and the Moon Sees Me Viking, 1996 successfully use art and text to convey a sense of the wonder of the natural world.Virginia Golodetz, St. Michael's College, Winooski, VT
Kirkus Reviews
A quietly alluring mood piece that focuses on the twilight times when "night and day stand whispering secrets before they go their separate ways" at dawn and dusk. Fletcher (Ordinary Things, p. 460, etc.) finds impressionistic images—"Dusk pours the syrup of darkness into the forest" and "dawn erases the stars from the blackboard of night"—that Kiesler makes concrete, by including in her lush, light-drenched paintings a girl and a dog who witness the topical observations of the text. The exploration of how these transitory periods affect the lives of people—from children playing in the park to fishermen casting out in the fading light, from commuters to the girl's family, setting the breakfast table—is achieved through an inclusive sensory range, from dusk's fireflies that swim through air to write "bright messages in secret code," to dawn's smell of doughnuts outside the bakery. Words and art coalesce into an invitation to readers to move beyond the page and into their own explorations of twilight.
