By Leslie Lindsay 
We’re back with another amazing round of children’s literature for the next few weeks. I’m in love with children’s picture books and there’s a reason: they’re nostalgic to those days when I’d wait (not so patiently) for my dad to arrive home from work so he could read to me from my Disney mail-order books the floor of my large closet, arm draped over my tiny shoulders, and ‘do’ his voices, making them higher or lower, goofy, or serious, always with a glint in his eye. It was the beginning of a love affair with the written word.
THE NIGHT VOYAGE (Random House, August 2016) is an evocatively illustrated story of a little girl who is swept away on the eve of her birthday by her toy train conductor on a magical journey to distribute gifts around the globe, from London to Paris to Granada. Following the trend of the previous books, Daria Song enchants readers with beautifully intricate art that her fans have come to love, featuring a world of paper cranes, penny-farthing bicycles, trolleys, cityscapes, and hot air balloon-filled skies.
- Why wordless books have meaning.
- How one person can interpret a series of events differently that someone else.
- How one’s story vision might be different than someone else’s.
- Make up your own continuation to THE NIGHT VOYAGE.
- Draw your own companion art and share with others.
- Compose a song (or look for one in your collection) that connects to the art within the book. What kind of song did you select?
- Is the book evocative of a dream? Can you share a dream you had recently that relates?
- Makes a darling gift for a young/middle grade girl
About the Author: Daria Song is an artist living and working in Seoul, Korea, and has drawn inspiration from time spent in foreign cities as a child. The Night Voyage is the perfect way for coloring enthusiasts to add their own artistic flair to some of the most striking world wonders.
[Special thanks to B. Leahy at Ten Speed Press/Random House. Images retrieved from Random House website on 10.2.16. With the exception of portion in quotations, all written material and review is my own.]
Leslie A. Lindsay| Writer & Creative 