Book Description

It's late night in the city. From his father's shoulder, a sleepless baby watches the snow drift down from the sky onto the busy street below. What are all those noises? What are all those lights? His tired but patient father explains everything, from the bustle of taxis swishing through the slush to the grinding and slamming of the early-morning garbage trucks. Teddy Jam's lyrical prose and Eric Beddows's detailed illustrations cast Night Cars in that magical light between sleep and waking. A warm and witty tale for a cold winter's night. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Our son loved this book.
I don't know where this crummy horn reviewer is coming from, but our son loved this book and heard it read to him (willingly! eagerly!) about a zillion times. It is just a sweet little gem of a bedtime book, and the illustrations are wonderful - very evocative of urban/residential streetlife and what you see from your two-flat window. Highly recommended (and muchly missed - our son's doing his own "bedtime reading" now....).

Don't believe Horn Books
This book is a WONDERFUL bedtime book.One of the best around.The reviewer from Horn Books (who said that the book has badly rhymed verse) clearly has no appreciation for any but the most trivial and obvious rhymes(e.g. night and light).It's all in how you read it.In aBritish/Canadian vernacular (the author is from Canada), "green"and "again" nearly rhyme in "engines roar, light turnsgreen, night cars on their way again".The text of this book ishypnotic and delightful (AND our child loves to hear it again and again).

Also, the illustrations are far from unexceptional.The artist EricBeddows has a wonderful sense of detail and weaves visual themes throughoutthe book.

It's as good or better than "Train Song" by DianeSiebert and Mike Wimmer (Illustrator).

My kids all love it, a fantastic bedtime story!
Horn Book is under the gross misimpression that poetry which doesnot rhyme is necessarily bad.Night Cars is an endearing story, with a wonderfully sonorous meter.The illustrations hold a toddler's attention.It's a perfect bedtime story for bad sleepers and their parents. ... Read more

Book Description

Poetic text and exquisite watercolors evoke a mother's love for her newborn child. "This new baby sleeps in my arms like a moon sleeping on a cloud, like apples falling through the rain, like a fish swimming through a sky." While baby wakes and sleeps and the night runs through to dawn, all the magic of this new life fills a new mother's heart. ... Read more

Book Description

When Charlotte learns that her favorite teacher is leaving the school, she vows to hate the replacement forever. But she finds comfort one afternoon. After a baseball game in which she hits the ball so hard that it explodes, a strange dog follows her home in a rainstorm. The dog responds only to commands spoken backwards -- emoC ereh! -- so she names him ttuM. ttuM becomes Charlotte's constant companion, even following the girl to her parents' summer cottage on a lake. Everything seems to be fine until Charlotte becomes aware of a mysterious person who always dresses in black and likes to go canoeing -- a witch! The witch's house turns out to be just down the road, and it smells enticingly of gingerbread cookies. When ttuM disappears one night, grief-stricken Charlotte decides that she must summon up her courage and go looking for him, even if it means breaking into the witch's house. ... Read more

Book Description

A boy's father is a ticket scalper for Maple Leaf Gardens, a major sports stadium in Toronto. As a young boy, the father was schoolmates with the Conacher brothers, now famous hockey stars. His son knows their stories by heart. One night, Charlie Conacher appears and buys tickets to a game for himself and the father and son. A shared love of hockey and each other makes this a memorable tale. ... Read more

Book Description

A young boy's father, like many of the local farmers, owes money to the powerful Mr. Richard. Although Mr. Richard has been unfriendly, when the boy sees him clearing a field of stones, he decides to lend a hand. The boy's father joins in, and by dawn the difficult job is completed and the debt has been forgiven. This historically accurate story of farm life in the '20s expands the author's series of stories about traditional rural life. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Delightfully charming and lyrical
Greatly enjoyed this book, the illustrations were excellent and really added to the story. Farm life and the importance of neighborliness is well-expressed and a pleasure to read about. ... Read more