NIGHT TREASURE

A girl and her father see their neighborhood in a whole new way by exploring it at night.

It’s raining out, and Daddy is busy, so young Quinn tries to make her own fun by improvising a treasure hunt around the house, but the space is too familiar to yield interesting rewards. By the time the rain finally stops, it’s dark out, and Quinn is in her pajamas; regardless, Daddy decides it’s a fine time for a treasure hunt—outside. They bundle up and find an autumnal world aglow with light from various sources: the moon, streetlamps, animals’ eyes, and so on. As for the “treasure,” Quinn discovers what she’s looking for when she reaches a tree. Underneath are acorns “glistening / like gems in silver light,” and to her, “it felt like no one else had ever / been awake so late / wandered so far / made such a discovery / (especially in pj’s).” By story’s end, Quinn has a pocketful of acorns, but readers will likely intuit that the real treasure is the time she’s spent with her dad. Wortche’s text has a poetic quality that jibes with Farrell’s mixed-media art, which is rich with nighttime blues and greens dusted with light. And Farrell offers some marvelously skewed angles on her subjects, reinforcing the book’s point: It’s all in how you look at things. Quinn is tan-skinned; Daddy is slightly darker-skinned.

A revelatory make-your-own-adventure story.