Age 2-6

Irving has joined the ranks of writers for adults who have produced a children’s book. His picturebook, though, was not originally written for children. It uses a story told by a parent to a little girl in his novel A Widow for One Year, in which context it was punctuated by the anxiety of the child listening. This book is still about anxiety, and in particular about the fear of night-time noises. It has a curious and poignant text, made even more interesting by Hauptmann’s expertly pencil-drawn illustrations, which take the daring path of expressing the mood of the story without exactly depicting the action. The text relates how a boy wakes in the night and has a conversation with his father about a scary sound. The pictures do not show the father, but show the child exploring his moonlit house. As the boy tells his parent about the monster that he imagines, we see him contemplate shadows, emptiness and the landscape outside (all blue), accompanied only by his teddy bear, which appears to have a life of its own. The illustrations get inside the child’s head and, in the end, the source of the noise is reassuring for the boy. But not for his little brother . . .

(Bloomsbury £12.99)

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