NIGHT NIGHT, CURIOSITY

A child with eyes on the skies fits an envisioned trip to Mars into the bedtime routine.

After Mom has gone off to work a night shift at (as a later video call reveals) Mission Control, Dad flies the space-mad young narrator upstairs to wash up, snuggle down, and all the while imagine traveling with the Curiosity rover through space to land on Mars. In his russet-toned illustrations, O’Rourke bucks a common trend in the recent spate of entry-level tributes by not anthropomorphizing the durable rover. Consequently, the episode is animated less by artificial, fanciful elements than by the child’s native interest in space. The child’s astronomical enthusiasm is underscored in the pictures as the scene switches back and forth from Mars to good-night hugs and kisses in a bedroom festooned with space-themed furnishings and decorations. If Sayres’ verses aren’t exactly star quality (“We cuddle with my bedtime book… / We’re racing toward the sand. / Our parachute helps slow us down. / It’s time for us to land”) and the illustrator varies the child’s size from scene to scene, still the premise has a certain glow to it…and both rhymed part and prose afterword shed glimmers of background information about the rover’s mission. Child and parents appear to be White, but there are figures with darker skin in a crowd scene.

It’s nice to see a vivid imagination at work even though this plods where it should soar.