Name: The House in the Night
ISBN: 9780547528304

Susan Marie Swanson

A spare, patterned text and glowing pictures explore the origins of light that make a house a home in this bedtime book for young children. Naming nighttime things that are both comforting and intriguing to preschoolers—a key, a bed, the moon—this timeless book illuminates a reassuring order to the universe.

The House in the Night

Illustrations and easy-to-read text explore the light that makes a house in the night a home filled with light.

The house in the night

Sarah Sammis

The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson has a stunning and inviting cover, a black house outlined in white and lit by a few yellow lights. The book retells and expands upon the nursery rhyme "There is a Key to the Kingdom."

The book uses the pattern of the rhyme to carry the reader through the story as a child is put to bed. There is a light in the room, a bed in the light, a book on the bed and so forth. Each piece of light is highlighted in yellow with the remainder of the illustration being a black and white line drawing.

Emergent readers should be able to predict what comes next especially as the story begins repeat in the objects in reverse order. The richly detailed illustrations can also be used with children to name and count objects.

Jenny Mikac

I love books like these that are light on text and leave a lot of room for the art. It means my daughter and I can sit together and talk about the art and what’s going on in the pictures. This particular book is filled with beautiful black and white illustrations splashed with a golden yellow, and it appears that they were made on scratchboard. There’s a lot of lovely details for your child to explore as you sit together.

The House in the Night

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