The Horn Book Guide

PRESCHOOL

Hutchins, Hazel

One Dark Night

32 pp. | Viking | May, 2001 | Trade ISBN 0-670-89246-7 $$15.99

(2) PS Illustrated by Susan Kathleen Hartung. This book is full of elemental power and high drama--unusual in a book for quite young children. It succeeds because both power (an approaching thunderstorm) and drama (the rescue of newborn kittens) are child-sized, pitched perfectly to a child's experience. The art, though generic, and the direct, immediate text ably capture the atmosphere of a summer storm and the intensity of a child's involvement in--for him--a momentous event.

Reviewer: Martha V. Parravano | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2001