One Starry Night

September 26, 2011
Under a starry slate-blue sky, mother animals watch their children in this outing from the team that created The Apple Pie That Papa Baked. Italicized text forms a separate rhyming stream of loving maternal commentary (“I am here/ always near”) as the main text describes scenes of loving mother-child companionship, culminating with Joseph, Mary, and their newborn, with animal pairs gathered round. Per an author’s note, the featured animals could all be found in the Holy Land at the time of Jesus’ birth. Thompson focuses on the Nativity theme of love; Bean also keeps it simple with a limited palette of earth tones. The book is more universalist than Christian, which should allow it a broad readership. Ages 1–6.

Starred review from September 1, 2011

This arresting story of the first Christmas has a succinct, powerful, rhyming text and striking illustrations unlike any other version of the Nativity story, with art and words perfectly matched in an artistic tour de force.

At first glance, the story seems extremely short, even simplistic, and the illustrations washed out, lacking color or life. Look deeper. The gentle, soothing text is related in two voices, one describing mother-and-child pairs of animals, the second offering comforting words in the voice of the mother. The mother's words are a beautiful rhyming poem, the thoughts of a caring parent that can also be interpreted as the voice of God speaking to his children. The mother-and-child pairs move slowly through the dark night, illustrated in minimalist shapes in a desert-night palette of tan, gray, gray-blue and black. The animal pairs gather around Mary and Joseph and their newborn in a tableau of simple shapes against a huge tree, with the merest hint of a shelter and manger. Look deeper again. Both the muted illustrations using simple shapes and a flattened perspective and the simplified text from two viewpoints indicate the influence of cubism, a different way of looking at a complex subject.     

This unforgettable interpretation stands out as a bright, multifaceted star in the crowded constellation of Christmas Eve stories. (Picture book/religion. 4-8)

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from October 1, 2011

PreS-Gr 4-Animal parents look after their offspring as they watch over Mary and Joseph caring for baby Jesus. The animals, rendered in pencil with soft digital coloring, are the wild creatures that would have lived in the Holy Land at the time of the Nativity-wild boars and oxen, jackals, and cheetahs-not their domestic counterparts. This tender, poetic retelling of the age-old story takes the form of a whispered prayer as it highlights the nurturing given to babies of many species. The art and the words strike just the right tone of reverence and delight. A lovely offering.-Virginia Walter, UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2011
Preschool-G In this peaceful ode to the Nativity, six parent-child animal pairs make their way toward the manger. As the creatures collectively join Mary, Joseph, and baby, the double-page spreads evoke a gentle spirituality and comforting familial moments in intimate close-ups of parents nurturing their younga cat licks her kitten, a donkey gently guides her foal up a hillthat expand to a wide tableau reminiscent of Edward Hicks' painting The Peaceable Kingdom. Bean, an Ezra Jack Keats Awardwinning artist, has digitally colored his spare, angular, stylized pencil art in a calming black, brown, and blue palette that echoes the story's hushed tone, while Thompson's words, which move with soothing repetition and a lulling rhythm, may replace Clement C. Moore's as part of the final lights-out on Christmas Eve: And the world was filled with love / God's will be done / Amen.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)