In the Night Garden – Perfect Picture Book Friday

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Some picture books are such a visual feast you might not care if the words are less than stellar. This isn’t the case for In the Night Garden. The images and words are both lyrical and designed to leave you in quiet contemplation at the end, like a good bedtime book should.

The first spread offers a taste of what you can expect throughout. And yes, every page will contain a cat. How apropros for a journey through a night garden. And LOOK at those fireflies! Each one its own bubble of light. Each one different.

“In the night garden, fireflies look like fallen stars.”

Each page is just as exquisite, with intricately handcut collage illustrations and quietly fanciful descriptions of insects, plants, and creatures of the night.

“Moonflowers unfurl and release their intoxicating perfume.”

I love that the author uses the word “intoxicating.” It’s fun to read aloud, and so appropriate for flowers that open and spill their scent at night. The mix of flowers, tendrils, geckos, and fragments of typed words creates a soporific world that feels as if it is made from scraps of the day, the words that have been heard, absorbed, and are now floating away, combining with thoughts and objects to make up the texture of the night. Gorgeous!

Note that the silhouette of the cat’s head on the first spread turns into a full body silhouette (sans legs) of a cat in the second spread.

On the third spread, a child enters the picture with a normal size cat as a pet. The pair is curled on the grass and looking up at the stars in the night sky. A shooting star explodes across the page, with a cat’s face in its center.

And fittingly, it is the cat, not the child, who makes the journey through the night garden, padding silently, exploring, lurking, and listening to the night sounds. I love how the sounds are depicted as ribbons of musical notes, words, or even snowflakes.

At the end, the ribbon of sound of an owl’s question takes us back to the child, now in her bedroom, yawning in bed, and the cat pawing at fish in an aquarium. The bedroom contains small details of all the things the cat has seen in the night garden on previous pages, an opportunity for the child in your lap to identify the things that cat has seen one more time before closing their eyes.

The story ends with the child snuggling the cat under her arm in bed asleep. Ahhhhhh.

Although, I think the bunny slippers in the last bedroom spread might be a nod to Goodnight Moon, I’m not sure. That book is packed away in my son’s baby keepsake bin. Maybe someone will let me know.

In the Night Garden is a gorgeous book that kids will be sure to ask for over and over again at bedtime, because the cadence of the text is mesmerizing, there are so many fascinating details to see, that black cat is just irresistible, and because it has the same strange, timeless feeling as Goodnight Moon. Sweet Dreams!

Activities:

Pair this book with The Night Gardener by The Fan Brothers.

Make an origami cat.

Make a button moon collage, and perhaps add a few fireflies, if you like.

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Title: In the Night Garden

Author/Illustrator: Carin Berger

Publisher: Neal Porter Books, 2023

Themes: nighttime, nature, cats

Ages: 3-7

For more perfect picture book recommendations, please visit Susanna Hill’s website.