Flashlight Night

by Matt Forrest Esenwine, Fred Koehler (Illustrator)

Overview

Flashlight Night is an ode to the power of imagination and the wonder of books. Three children use a flashlight to light a path around their backyard at night; in the flashlight’s beam another world looms. Our heroes encounter spooky woods, a fearsome tiger, a time-forgotten tomb, an Egyptian god, a sword-fighting pirate, and a giant squid. With ingenuity, they vanquish all, then return to their tree house—braver, closer, and wiser than before—to read the books that inspired their adventure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781629794938
Publisher:	Astra Publishing House
Publication date:	09/19/2017
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	1,090,163
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.40(d)
Lexile:	AD630L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Matt Forrest Esenwine’s poetry has been published in Highlights® as well as in anthologies selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, Carol-Ann Hoyte, and J. Patrick Lewis. He is co-author with Deb Russ of the picture book Don’t Ask A Dinosaur, which will be published in Fall 2017 by Pow! Kids Books. He lives with his family in Warner, New Hampshire. Visit mattforrest.com.

Fred Koehler won a Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor Award for his illustrations for One Day, The End. He is the author-illustrator of How To Cheer Up Dad, which received three starred reviews, and he is the illustrator of This Book Is Not About Dragons and Puppy, Puppy, Puppy. He lives with his children in Lakeland, Florida. Visit ilikefred.com.

Editorial Reviews

07/03/2017
Three children get ready to spend the night in a tree house with a blanket roll and a stack of books. An older boy with brown skin carries a flashlight that slices through the darkness, “past old post and rail/ along a long-forgotten trail.” In scribble-textured pencil drawings, Koehler (This Book Is Not About Dragons) pictures scenes of make-believe unfolding within the flashlight’s beam. The boy and his companions—a girl his age and a younger boy in footie pajamas, both white—explore a tomb, battle a threatening pirate aboard his ship, then vanquish a giant squid. In the darkness beyond the flashlight’s glare, readers can see the real landscape that provides the settings for the fantasy play: the tomb is under the backyard deck, and the pirate ship is in the pool. The final page reveals another source of the group’s swashbuckling adventures: the books the three are reading together. Newcomer Esenwine’s balladic verse and Koehler’s sturdily drafted pencil drawings don’t just lobby for children to read—they show how readers play. Ages 4–8. Illustrator’s agent: Tracey Adams, Adams Literary. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

★"The contrast between darkness and the area illuminated by a flashlight fascinates children, but this title kicks the fun up a notch. Three kids...are heading for a summer sleepover in the treehouse. Wherever the storyteller focuses the (flash) light, the real transforms into the imagined, and the green/gray of night fills with subdued color. The modest swimming pool inspires a pirate escapade; a rope ladder links to a hot air balloon rescue. The delicious language and ingenious metamorphoses, rendered in pencil and colored digitally, are tied directly to classic books stacked near the sleeping bags. A rousing read." – Kirkus Reviews, starred review.

"Newcomer Esenwine's balladic verse and Koehler's sturdily drafted pencil drawings don't just lobby for children to read—they show how readers play." – Publishers Weekly

"A flashlight becomes a gateway to a whole new world in this imaginative picture book. At night, three kids sit in a tree house, telling stories with only a flashlight to see by. Muted pencil illustrations show the nighttime scenery...while the flashlight beam cuts across the pages, illuminating more surprising scenes. Each double-page spread grows more fantastical...Despite the excitement, the gentle rhyming text will wind young listeners down and help prepare them for dreamland adventures of their own." -Booklist

"On any dark night, a flashlight illuminating shadows can create delicious thrills. Here,...(i)t's an old-fashioned, rip-roaring imaginary adventure, complete with a pirate, an ancient Egyptian chamber, and traveling to a 'foreign shore.'' – The Horn Book

“There’s something almost magical about flashlights. Esenwine’s poem captures this quality...(t)he verse is incantatory, summoning jungle beasts, Egyptian tombs, pirate ships, and the like. Koehler’s digitally colored pencil drawings cleverly depict what’s really in the kids’ surroundings while also showing what they are imagining…a simple idea that’s engagingly executed and would be an excellent, atmospheric read for sleepovers or backyard campouts.” - School Library Journal

“The creative illustrations make the story come alive by using a beam of light to highlight the imaginary parts…This picture book, reminiscent of Where the Wild Things Are, encourages children to find adventures in a boundless world through reading.” – School Library Connection

From the Publisher

09/01/2017
PreS-Gr 2—There's something almost magical about flashlights. Esenwine's poem captures this quality as three children (one brown-skinned and two white) explore a backyard, deck, basement, and tree house under the beam of their torch. The verse is incantatory, summoning jungle beasts, Egyptian tombs, pirate ships, and the like. Koehler's digitally colored pencil drawings cleverly depict what's really in the kids' surroundings while also showing what they are imagining: the edge of an upended vase in the ray of light is revealed to be a part of a baseball in the dark, a bone is actually a knotted rope, the ocean is really the above-ground pool, and so on. VERDICT This is a simple idea that's engagingly executed and would be an excellent, atmospheric read for sleepovers or backyard campouts. A good choice for most collections.—Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Library, NY

School Library Journal

★ 2017-05-31
The contrast between darkness and the area illuminated by a flashlight fascinates children, but this title kicks the fun up a notch. Three kids—a white child with long hair and a baseball cap, another white youngster clutching a teddy bear, and a black boy with a flashlight (the narrator)—are heading for a summer sleepover in the treehouse. Wherever the storyteller focuses the light, the real transforms into the imagined, and the green/gray of night fills with subdued color. Observant eyes will note that even in the first scene, fence posts morph into tree trunks in the glow, and a striped cat becomes a tiger slinking into the "forest." "FLASHLIGHT," written once, is the subject of every rhymed couplet that follows: directed under the porch, it "Casts a glow upon a wall / down a dark and ancient hall / as inky shadows rise and fall, / dancing… / to no sound at all." Hieroglyphs, columns, and an object that is half baseball/half ancient urn fill the space—and are those shadows dogs? Fist-bumping? (Closer examination reveals a humorous twist.) The modest swimming pool inspires a pirate escapade; a rope ladder links to a hot air balloon rescue. The delicious language and ingenious metamorphoses, rendered in pencil and colored digitally, are tied directly to classic books stacked near the sleeping bags. A rousing read. (Picture book. 4-7)

Kirkus Reviews