Things That Go Bump! In The Night: My House is Alive! by Scot Ritchie

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties,
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!

People have long feared the things of the night, and even the bravest among us can remember how scary unknown sounds can be in the dark. While children today need not fear marauding Norsemen or hungry bears or shrouded spirits, the imagination can run wild when the sun goes down.

HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED

THERE ARE SOME NOISES

YOU ONLY HEAR AT NIGHT?

That buzzing sound? Could it be a giant hornet stalking the halls?

Or is it the vibrating panels in the ballast box of the fluorescent light in the kitchen?

Is that gurgling sound some sort of sea monsters oozing up through the bathtub drain?

Or is it a faulty toilet tank flapper drip-gurgling in the bathroom?

And what's that scratching sound in the living room? The one that sounds like something with giant claws scrabbling to get in?

Could it be the amplified sound of a bird family who's decided the chimney is a really safe place to roost and raise babies?

Scot Ritchie's new My House Is Alive!: The Weird and Wonderful Sounds Your House Makes (Owlkids Books, 2015) gives youngsters a chance to sleuth out those noises that sound so sinister in the darkest hours before the dawn. Stairs creak. Is it a monster sneaking upstairs--or the wood drying and shrinking bit by bit in the staircase. Houses settle slowly on their foundations, with loud crunches and thumps as the night air cools.  And that rumble is only the garage door opening as Dad drives in. Ritchie's comic double-page spreads portray a boy and his pooch with the imagined ghoulies and beasties, followed by the real source of the sounds, all in a bedtime book that may allay some childhood fears with the knowledge that these sudden sounds are actually their houses on the job looking after them, the fridge defrosting itself and the furnace rumbling into action to keep us cozy.

And there may be one more nighttime sound that parents long to hear....

HOUSES MAKE ALL SORTS OF SOUNDS AT NIGHT.

HERE'S ONE MORE YOU MIGHT KNOW...

YAWWWWWN!