When the Sky is Like Lace

Reviewed by: Michelle Brenner - Casco Public Library, Casco, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: February 8, 2016

Review

This book is a nonsensical tale about magical things that happen on bimulous nights when the sky is like lace including singing otters, sulking snails, dancing trees and grass that smells like gooseberry jam. There are lots of silly things you can do on these evenings like eating spaghetti with pineapple sauce, exchanging presents of three fireflies in a jar or pretend to be a helicopter. It uses some interesting vocabulary like the fictitious bimulous and I had to look up kissing gourami to see if was a real thing so I learned something. How many children's books use the color chartreuse? The soft muted water color illustrations set a lovely dream-like mood of a warm, stormy summer night. The Victorian-era details in the clothing and architecture were appealing and set an old-fashioned tone to the story. The illustrations were my favorite part of the story. The silliness of the verse could be appealing to children as a read-aloud, but it was didn't flow as I hoped it would.

Overall Book Score: good