A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound

The story that forms the basis of this picture book originally appeared within Irving’s novel, A Widow for One Year. This is the multi award-winning author’s first book for children. It’s an unusual picture book, and one that one suspects would have been unlikely to have made it past the commissioning editor’s office were it not for the status of its author. Fortunately, it did. This is a book of night fears, things that go scratch in the dark, hanging clothes that become sinister, shadowy characters in a child’s mind. All in all, the perfect bedtime read! But the book is beautiful, thanks to the artwork of Tatjana Hauptmann whose silent, dusty, woody pictures capture perfectly the backdrop of eastern American clapboard house on a moonlit summer night. Her images hit just the right note with their balance of the sinister and gently humorous. There are echoes of Rego and Sendak here. It is perhaps this sense of place that makes the book so compelling. The text knows when to let the pictures do the talking and the understated, unfussy design shows the illustrations to best effect.