Lights at Night

Following an East Asian–cued family, Hilderman’s evocative first-person-plural prose and Zeng’s painterly digital artwork characterize the four seasons via emblematic “lights at night” in this satisfying springtide-to-wintertide tour. Amid a spring rainstorm in which “lightning cracks and electrifies the night,” the subjects race home, then read by flashlight when the power goes out. Summer brings a campfire “sending sparks like fireflies,” while autumn involves a Halloween jaunt in which “we crack glow sticks.” Throughout, a fox and its growing cubs shadow their human counterparts—lapping at lake water that simultaneously reflects summertime fireworks, and later seeming to leap from a wintertime northern lights display, before their “eyeshine” is caught in the family’s vehicle headlights during a drive through snow flurries. Highlighted with the help of page-filling art and poetic lines, night lights offer an ideal and innovative angle onto the pleasures of a northern clime’s seasons. Background characters are portrayed with various abilities and skin tones. Ages 3–7. (Aug.)