(2) K-3 Snider tells the story of a common experience: a tediously gray day with nothing to do. Loose-lined drawings in colored pencil and marker depict a mostly colorless world interrupted by bright bursts of yellow, pink, and blue, as the protagonist explores familiar places by bike in search of something new. After passing by several humdrum locations, the young narrator ventures out on a path through the woods and sees leaves, streams, and trees from a new perspective. The gray world opens up with possibilities and color, and the narrator finds a way to appreciate even the seemingly dullest of days. Snider's sensory-rich verbs and other word choices support his illustrations: raindrops "speckle" the sidewalk; the bike is "rickety"; trees are "gnarled." The creative, engaging vocabulary paired with the high-contrast art helps young readers learn new words and their meanings in context. Snider paints a relatable picture and leaves readers with a message: when everything seems gray, it's up to you to search for color.

Reviewer: | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2023

(2) PS "What color is night? / Is it only black... / and white?" So begins an evocative picture book that urges young viewers to "look closer" at the night--to see, for example, the golden glow of fireflies, the neon lights of the city, the silver of the Milky Way, the green of a raccoon's eyes. Deeply saturated double-page spreads use inky dark backgrounds to effectively highlight those pops of color and light. And though it is the striking art that may rivet a child audience's attention, the text, with its soothing rhythms and strong near-rhymes full of rich long vowels ("road" / "glow"), is an equal partner. The shivery, otherworldly quality of both art and text ramps up at the end, where the little girl we initially saw looking out her window into the darkness dreams of flying through the sky in a hot-air balloon, soaring above pink and purple clouds into "a night of good dreams." Pair this with Mordicai Gerstein's cf2]The Night World (rev. 5/15) to show the dark as something to explore and appreciate, not fear.

Reviewer: Martha V. Parravano | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2020