Good Night, Firefly

PreS-Gr 2—Nina is afraid of the dark and relies on her night-light. Things get dark and scary when the electricity goes out, so she finds a firefly and puts him in a jar to replace the electric night-light. The digitally enhanced cartoon-style illustrations are mostly in black, with large bright white spotlights, which have few changes in value, even when the power goes out. The same amount of pen-and-ink cross-hatching is applied to pages when the firefly's light is dimming or when there is no light all. The illustrations, while unusual in their color scheme, and interestingly applied as elements in the layout, do not make sense visually to readers. Children who have never seen a firefly will learn very little about them since they are depicted as a tiny point of golden watercolor in an orb of bright white, without insect features. Anna Vojtech's Ten Flashing Fireflies (North South, 1997), and Eric Carle's standard The Very Lonely Firefly (Philomel, 1995), all show fireflies as glowing orbs of light while giving the basic anatomical details. At the end, Nina rightly decides to release the insect back into the night.