Under the Night Sky

This week my kids and I had the pleasure of reading Under the Night Sky, written by Amy Lunderbrek and illustrated by Anna Rich. I think it is a great book for green kids because it teaches them something valuable about the wondrous natural world around them. It is incredibly important to me that my kids love nature and and the natural world because I want them to see the importance of protecting it. We all really liked the book and it will be a treasured addition to our family library.

The book is about the amazing Northern Lights or aurora borealis… something I would love to see in my lifetime and would love for my kids to see. It is also a book that honors special moments shared between parent and child and how sharing something as beautiful and rare as the Northern Lights puts things into perspective.

The book starts off with a boy waiting for his mom to come home from work and give him his goodnight kiss. He always stays awake until that tradition has been completed. But this night however his mom runs into the house and tells him to get dressed quickly, boots, jacket, mittens, etc. The boy thinks there might a fire or some other emergency and when he gets outside he sees the whole neighborhood is up and out..sitting on their cars and looking up into the sky. What he sees after that is dance of color and light like he has never seen. He and his mom share some hugs and some profound thoughts about their relationship as they gaze at the light display. I also loved how it showed children who did not otherwise know each other or get along with each other could find common ground on that night as they sat together, huddling for warmth and sharing a spectacular experience.

The illustrations in the book where a bit different since they were so dark. They had to be since the book is set at night but some of the illustrations were hard to see. Other than that I liked them….especially the jewel toned lights. The story was really special too and my two oldest really like it and had only a hundred questions to ask about the Northern Lights…what are they, what causes them, do they happen every year, can we see them? It spurred some great conversations and Internet research. I think we might be reading this every winter by the warmth of a fire, dreaming about someday experiencing for ourselves the Northern Lights.