SEEKING AN AURORA

A father awakens a child for a nighttime adventure in nature in this import from New Zealand.

“We’re off to find an Aurora,” the father says, and the two quietly slip past the sleeping mother and baby and exit the house into the night. The child doesn’t know what an aurora is. As they walk past the cows and away from the house and up a hill, the child asks questions about the aurora. Are stars in the aurora? (No.) Is the moon in the aurora? (No.) The mystery builds as they approach the top of the hill, where they can see “only the sky, the stars, and the moon.” They sit there at the top, and at last the child sees the aurora: “dancing light, glowing and…glimmering, shimmering and shining. Colored ribbons swirling and twirling, lighting up the sky on the still, dark night.” The pastel-drawn artwork successfully evokes the warmth of the home, the cold of the dark night, and the splendor of the colored lights of the aurora. The spare, effective text is simple and lyrical, pairing neatly with the textured art. A simple endnote, titled “Everything Dad Knew About the Aurora,” offers a child-friendly explanation of how an aurora comes to be without interrupting the immersive nature of the story. The narrator and their family have brown skin and straight, dark hair.

A magical experience.