The Longest Night

The Longest Night
By: Marion Dane Bauer
Holiday House 2009
Picture Book

The Longest Night was a great example of how picture books are not just silly children tales, they can actually have depth to them and be absolutely beautiful. The Longest Night is beautifully written since I believe it is written in some sort of poetic format. All of the animals are trying to get the sun to rise and it goes through some animals and why they think they can do it. However, the wind keeps telling them that they cannot bring the sun back. The wind then tells the chickadee that it is the only one who can bring the sun up. There is personification through out the book, but it is a lot more serious than something like Click, Clack, Moo.  Each animal is serious about wanting to be the one to bring the sun up and talk about how the sun is gone. Also, the wind speaks to everyone and decides if they are the ones to rise the sun.

I feel like this book would be kind of hard for young students to read. Maybe by 5th grade it could be introduced in a poetry unit so they could see how poetry can be used in a story and not just one linear thing. Also, I think it would have to be taught at that age because it would be hard for students younger than that to see the beauty within such a simple story. The illustrations are beautiful in this book and really accentuate the darkness of the night and how desperate they are for the sun to come back up. However, the book is still simple enough, because it has a lot of repetition which is why it would make a great introductory poetry book. I feel like you could also look at this book from another perspective because this happens every night to them and they probably do not know why. You could imagine what it is like to be these animals alone in the dark with no one else but each other.