NIGHT CREEPERS

Meet a few of the mostly North American animals that come out at night.

“Waking up. // Noisy pup. // Flutter high. // Gliding by.” The book works equally well for lap-sitters and older children since these rhyming verses accompany longer paragraphs about each species, here red foxes, gray wolves, bats (it appears to be a lesser long-nosed bat), and flying squirrels, respectively. Others include skunks, opossums, bullfrogs, fireflies, raccoons, owls (a barn owl is pictured), bobcats, and white-tail deer. (Of those, skunks and deer are more crepuscular than nocturnal, as are rabbits, one of which is pictured in the final spread.) The information presented covers food, habitat, family life, and adaptations. Highly detailed, sometimes–hyper-realistic illustrations bring these animals to life for readers, though the bright colors and high contrast don’t always make it clear that it’s nighttime. Three-quarters of each double-page spread is devoted to an up-close look at the animal, and the text, easy to read against the background, is usually decorated with a vignette illustration. Troublingly, the firefly page shows a child inspecting a closed jar of the insects, then a tipped-over jar as they fly away. The lid has no holes. A “For Creative Minds” section introduces further vocabulary and concepts and asks readers to sort several species accordingly. It also identifies several animal adaptations and challenges readers to match species to their eyeshine. A Spanish-language paperback edition, Sigilosos de la noche, publishes simultaneously.

Beautiful if not quite perfect.