NEW YORK Day & Night – Perfect Picture Book Friday

Title:  NEW YORK Day & Night

Author: Aurélie Pollet

Illustrator: Vincent Bergier

Publisher: Prestel Verlag, March 19th, 2019, originally published in French by l’Agrume in 2017

 Ages: 3-6

Themes: New York City, perception, nighttime, daytime, imagination

Genre: Concept picture book

 Opening:

Good Evening, dear friend.
My name is Sandy.Are you ready to takeoff?
Let’s fly to the city that never sleeps

Synopsis:

Some of New York’s most familiar sights look very different at night in this highly amusing introduction to the city.

Sometimes your eyes can play tricks on you, especially in the dark. This enchanting picture book shows how New York City can look quite peculiar at night. Each brightly colored spread is overlaid with a sheet of translucent blue paper and when lifted, voilà! A space ship and Martian become The Guggenheim, a giant serpent is actually the subway, King Kong’s jungle turns into Central Park, and a superhero takes on the shape of a construction worker. Exhilarating and captivating, all the scenes are easily switched between day and night and will take the reader on a unique journey that lets imaginations run wild while revealing that some things at night aren’t as scary as they seem. (Publisher)

Why I like this book:

As someone who knows what it is to be a foreigner in New York City as well as more of a local now, it is fun to see an outsider’s perspective. In this case a cat who’s imagination goes a little wild when nighttime lighting transforms the city into a place of incredible fantasies. The translucent dream-scene pages, often with favorite superheroes/monsters will be a sure hit with young readers. I know when I was an elementary librarian some of my most borrowed books were with a torch/magnifying attachment. This will make a great group read-aloud in a classroom or library because of the page reveals.

Cool that it is a New York squirrel who keeps correcting our narrator cat, Sandy, about her misconceptions.

Activities/resources:

The story obviously leads itself to a prediction activity.

As an art activity, use the location of your local urban center and have your children create an imaginary night scene maybe starring their favorite (s)hero?

Don’t miss the interview I did this week with the illustrator, Vincent Bergier.

Each week a group of bloggers reviews picture books we feel would make great educational reads. To help teachers, caregivers and parents, we have included resources and/or activities with each of our reviews. A complete list of the thousands of books we have reviewed can be found sorted alphabetically and by topics, here on Susanna Leonard Hill’s website.