Customer Reviews

Night Shift

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Children often find guessing games a source of amusement, and night-time activities a source of intrigue. Night Shift has a good dose of both, with fascinating job descriptions linked together across the pages. Over the course of a single night that progressively moves towards daybreak, the reader meets people who work in a variety of occupations. Each worker somehow bumps into the next as the reader turns the page to guess which job it will be. Colorful illustrations and the upbeat prose enhance the book's appeal. Parents and teachers will find Night Shift a valuable tool for teaching children about human resources and different types of employment.

This book is the closest my kids are going to get to pulling an all-nighter -- for several years, at least. Author-illustrator Jessie Hartland (who used to design window displays for Barneys) introduces you to the magical people who work while the rest of us sleep. There's the street sweeper, the zookeeper, the bridge painters, and a host of nocturnal others. Hartland's paintings are punchy and fun. (The donut maker makes broccoli nut donuts, and the radio DJ looks like a cross between Eric Bogosian and Howard Stern.) The last page is lovely: as the sun rises, all the workers of the book -- and one ocelot -- gather at a clean, well-lighted place to share coffee.

There's something very magical about delving into what happens after the night lite goes on. While you're asleep, you might tell your little one, all SORTS of things happen outside (i.e., it's not all quiet and scary and lonely here, especially if you live in a big city like New York!)

Jessie Hartland is an exceptional storyteller, designer and illustrator. She weaves together colorful vignettes of the men and women who keep the city humming at night, some expected (freighter and tugboat captains, radio DJ, street sweeper, donut baker, and road worker) and some not (bridge painter, window dresser, fisherman, and zookeeper)!. The writing is a combination of (mostly) prose brightened with bits of poetry, although the prose is so rhythmic and sensual that I'd "elevate" it to "prose poetry":

"On a cool, dry night
bridge painters assemble
to climb the massive
suspension bridge...

At the tower's top
is an enormous nest:
a hawk with three eggs
are painted around.

Some paint drips down
but the traffic is light.
Not many cars out
so late at night.

Whose car gets
splattered passing under
a dripping bridge
at 1:00 am? [turn to the next page here]

The Zookeeper!"

That's the structure of the book: Several "stanzas" describing someone on the night shift, with a clever (and surprising smooth) transition to the next worker. However, night shift is unusual in it's attention to detail, selection of interesting, sometimes exotic characters, and the original look of the gouache illustrations--detailed, yet atmospheric, expansive, and uncluttered. The narrative above is depicted by oversized painters, hooked for safety, climbing the bridge, the night and the ocean suggested by broad strokes of deep blues, punctuated by city lights, billboards, and a small hawk family atop one tower.

The situations and workers should appeal to both genders, and Hartland brings some humor and whimsy to all this serious night time work. The donut baker, for example, posing in front of a silly-looking contraption with a smiling (and a hungry-hopeful cat nearby) has lots of donut decisions:

"Cream-filled? Sprinkley?
Tutti-frutti co-co?
Caramel-mint or
pistachio rococo?
Brocoli-nut, healthy
whole wheat?

Which one will she sample
on her 4:00 am break?

Hartland brings all these colorful night shift workers together for breakfast at the place where the night meets the day--a 24-hour diner. And just outside, refreshed from a calm and restful sleep, we see the kids briefly introduced at the story's beginning ("wishing [they] didn't have to go to bed just yet"), walking by on their way to school.

In sum, "Night Shift" exhibits a superb blend of design, structure, story, writing, and illustration, and I recommend it with great enthusiasm.

This picture book introduces the reader to some of the people who work at night including: a street sweeper, a security guard, a newspaper printer and a road worker. At the end of each description of a night worker, the author poses a question that leads to the next worker, "Whose late-night work outside the window distracts the printer?" leads to bridge painters or "Whose night shift slows down the truck in the middle of the night?" transitions to a road worker. Simple descriptive sentences or phrases accompany each double-spread illustration. "A backhoe breaks up the old road." "What a mess! But better to fix it now than at rush hour." Gouache paintings convey the energy of the workers and the feel of nighttime: painters stride up bridge towers each holding a pail and a brush and to the side is a small car that is spattered with paint, a brightly lit room at a zoo reveals some "nocturnal animals" like an owl monkey -with a face that looks more like a lion than a monkey- and a series of machines that spit out newspapers. There is an unfortunate stereotype: a man with a turban is driving a "Night Owl Taxi". Children will enjoy seeing activities that take place when they are asleep.