Opening with the full text of her lyrical unrhymed poem that begins, “Lovely the lateness / in summertime darkening,” Payne recalls a summer evening where inside and outside merge. The grownups are talking, the scent is of damp geraniums, children are playing hide and seek and, “Moths and mosquitoes are biting the lampposts.” Swiatkowska works with color, texture and magic; she lightly sketches the outlines of the child’s face lost in the splashes of geranium with dreamlike snatches of memory or story, a jug on the table has a face and there’s a pelican in a bowl. Wonderful things happen to the text, too: Multiple fonts in differing colors and weights swagger and sway throughout the pages, often with little decorative elements that echo historiated initials from illuminated manuscripts in extremely modern dress. Dreamily evocative, down to its last “no one is leaving / then everyone’s gone.” A rich confection, beautifully delivered. (Picture book. 3-8)
