WHEN MY DAUGHTER was an infant she cried in the evenings so I took her for walks. I walked along our street in the Berkeley hills to an opening in the trees that looked out over the bay and Mt. Tamalpais. I talked, pointing out things, from recycling bins to a sprawling oak tree
that grew through a fence. The walks calmed my daughter, and me. After half an hour she fell asleep and we came home to bed. That was the start of this book.

When I saw those evening walks could be a goodnight book I walked along our street again (my daughter older now and getting in the way of my sketching). I drew houses I liked, and trees, our neighbor’s Alexander Calder mobile, a black-and-white cat, and threw it all together. And I tried to write a story about the shifting sights and sounds of a neighborhood as it approached nighttime in the same way I had described it to someone who had never seen these things, or anything, before. This book is about small changes, and also about the big change for me as I became a father.

REVIEWS

Booklist 11.1.05
 STARRED REVIEW
"The clear, unfussy compositions echo the poetic words’ soothing, elemental sounds—reminiscent of Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon—which beautifully capture the soft, slow-down rhythms of dusk."

Kirkus 8.15.05
"Cooper’s warm and energetic watercolor and ink pictures are more detailed than his usual here, but hold the same evocative engagement with his audience."

School Library Journal 9.1.05
"A lovely choice."

PUBLISHER: Orchard Books 2005
An Imprint of Scholastic Inc.
ISBN 0-439-68783-7 $16.99