How to Make a Night was written by Linda Ashman and illustrated by Tricia Tusa. It was published by Harper Collins in 2004.
The first few pages is pure chaos in the house. This house is a disaster zone with everything all over the place. But the day has to come to an end so the young female protagonist teaches us how to put the sun away and make a starry night. By the end, the house is quiet and the main character can go to bed.
My goodness... I was so confused reading this story the first time that I had to read it one more time, just to be confused again. This is a really strange story and the illustrations are out there in left field.
Is this book an example of mixed media since photos, Adobe Illustrator (probably...) and detailed drawings of insects and animals are used? On one page it looks like various things were scratches into paper.
I borrow children’s books from the library and on the page that starts with “Peel the blue...” there’s some writing in pencil. A little child wrote “Circle the thing you wana want in thsi page I dont know? decied already?” I’m trying to figure out what this little vandal was trying to get me to do...
How to Make a Night is an imaginative story to say the least. The pace of the text can mostly be said in three syllables at a time. Some of the photos used in this book look a bit “dated” (I know... this book was published only nine years ago) since you can see the pixels are a bit blurry.
I’m not sure if this story is one that is going to be read twenty or thirty years down the road but it has some of the strangest art that I’ve seen in a children’s book so far.
