Night Job

PreS-Gr 2—It's sunset on a Friday night, and a child narrator and his father head out on a motorcycle through the darkening city streets toward a school. Inhaling the scent of lilacs as they enter the school lot, the narrator poignantly explains, "We pull into our space./Dad hauls out a ring of keys/as big as the rising moon./He opens the door,/and the building sighs./Come, it whispers to us." The boy's father is the school's custodian, and, together, the father and son work their way from room to room in the half-light of gym, the cafeteria, the hallways, and the library. Hesse captures a hushed, childlike wonder at a boy's father's evening custodial job, while Karas's quiet, powerful illustrations command a palette of grays and play with illumination to emphasize the details: an orange basketball, the green library sofa, or the brightness of the dream ocean in the book's last spread.