Night in the City

by Julie Downing

Overview

An ingenious account of the jobs people do all through the night, when kids are fast asleep.

In Night in the City, author and illustrator Julie Downing cleverly uses multiple panels to follow eight people throughout the course of their busy evening, from waking up just as most people are contemplating bedtime, through the following morning. 

The jobs depicted are nurse, baker, taxi driver, fire fighter, on location film tech, janitor, museum security guard, and emergency dispatcher. 

Together, their stories bring the beating heart of a city to life, making for a book sure to have kids pouring over meticulously designed pages, following the exploits of our lead characters over the course of a single ordinary evening.

A Pennsylvania Center for the Book Baker’s Dozen Selection
A Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year
A Chicago Public Library 'Best of the Best' Book
A Horn Book Fanfare Book
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823455188
Publisher:	Holiday House
Publication date:	03/28/2023
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	40
File size:	38 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Julie Downing has illustrated over forty-five picture books including Hello Moon, Cubs in the Tub: The True Story of the Bronx Zoo's First Woman Zookeeper by Candace Fleming, The Fire Keeper's Son, Tessa Takes Wing and First Mothers. She has won many awards including a Parents Choice Award, the New York Public Library's Best Books Award, APAAL Best Illustrated Book and the Irma Black Silver Medal. Her work has been featured in the SCBWI Original Art Show. Julie teaches illustration to undergraduate and graduate students at the Academy of Art University. She lives in San Francisco.

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/23/2023

In a series of lively, inventive spreads, Downing (Cubs in the Tub) pays homage to workers who take up their posts as much of a city heads for bed, drawing building cutaways of people preparing to venture out. “One person puts on extra layers to stay warm,” reads descriptive text, accompanying the image of a figure struggling into red long underwear. First touching on uniforms and transportation, lines next reveal an array of jobs. A baker “mixes flour and yeast for tomorrow’s bread.” Taxi drivers pick up late fares. A nurse looks on as a father kisses a new baby. Addressing the story directly to readers, she highlights the way the diverse workers’ time is turned upside down: “When it is the middle of the night and you need to get up, some people are sitting down to eat.” Warm, engaging artwork plays the dark indigo of night off warm, golden interior light. Combining the gravitas of Keeping the City Going with the straightforward charm of The Philharmonic Gets Dressed, Downing offers a gently bustling account of how “all night long, people are awake.” Ages 4–8. Agent: Rosemary Stimola, Stimola Literary. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"As the pages turn, children will find all sorts of beguiling details. . . ."—Wall Street Journal

★  "In a series of lively, inventive spreads, Downing (Cubs in the Tub) pays homage to workers who take up their posts as much of a city heads for bed, drawing building cutaways of people preparing to venture out. . . . Warm, engaging artwork plays the dark indigo of night off warm, golden interior light."—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

★ "Nifty details are everywhere, and crisscrossing narratives add tons of fun. Wisely, the quiet text lets the pictures tell the stories, allowing viewers to discover the connections on their own. . . . The characters’ diversity nicely reflects the big-city setting. . . ."—The Horn Book, Starred Review

"A beautiful introduction to the city at night. "—Booklist

"Will spark curiosity and awe."—School Library Journal

"Readers will close the book feeling that there's joy to be found in every job and every schedule. . . . Will make readers fall in love with the city depicted within."—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

10/06/2023

PreS-K—It is nighttime, and as a black-haired boy is getting ready for bed, his dad is preparing for work. In this vivid city with a multicultural population, people with all types of occupations busy themselves watering plants, adjusting uniforms, lacing up boots, and kissing goodbye as they depart for work. Downing offers a picture book for preschoolers who appreciate multilayered themes. The art on one side highlights a city with multiple means of transportation and people performing varied activities. People are talking on the phone, running, and practicing the tuba. On the other hand, the book focuses on many jobs people perform at nighttime (a nurse tending to a child at a hospital, a baker mixing ingredients for bread, and a janitor and guard working at a museum). The art is set to portray sequential illustrations combined with full-page and whole-spread illustrations, offering additional pictorial clues about things happening at night and adding to the constant motion of a city that does not sleep. The lines of text are set to a small font that moves around, accompanying the watercolor and digitally touched colored pencil illustrations emphasizing shades of yellow and blue. The storyline is simple, but includes plenty of vocabulary words to enrich emerging readers. VERDICT Like Katie Yamasaki's Dad Bakes, this is a detail-oriented picture book about people who work a different shift in a world that looks a little different and has different rules; and like that book, this will spark curiosity and awe.—Kathia Ibacache

School Library Journal

2022-12-14
From a nurse to an emergency dispatcher, a look at the city dwellers whose work begins when the sun goes down.

Reading this book is like looking through a telescope—there are windows on nearly every page; some pages feature rectangular, windowlike vignettes of people at work. On the front cover, a taxi driver is visible through the side window of a cab, with a dog sitting up in the back seat. Above them, on an upper floor, a museum worker is doing some vacuuming, with dinosaur bones in the background. Many of the people can be seen only from a great distance, and the details we learn about them often come from just a few spare sentences: “The museum is closed, but the janitor and security guard are hard at work.” Downing’s blue-tinged, cozy artwork sometimes makes words almost unnecessary—in this case, the accompanying illustration says it all, a full spread showing the janitor reaching up to dust the nose of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. Most of the people who are working late seem to be smiling, and while it’s difficult to find a message in the limited text, readers will close the book feeling that there’s joy to be found in every job and every schedule. The residents of this urban environment are diverse in skin tone. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Will make readers fall in love with the city depicted within. (Picture book. 3-5)

Kirkus Reviews