"Reading Between the Lions:" The Night Library by David Zeltser

It was the night before my eighth birthday, and I was having trouble falling asleep.

My door opened. "Would you like your present now?" my father asked.

"A book," said my mother. "I thought we could read it together."

"A book?" I stared at it. My parents knew I liked toys, games, movies--not books.

But the boy's restless sleep that night is broken by a sound like loud purring from outside, and when he raises the window he sees a large lion looking up at him.

I thought it was a statue until I saw the enormous paw prints in the snow.

"My name is Fortitude, the lion said."

And somehow the boy finds himself climbing on the large lion's back and racing past Yankee Stadium and through Manhattan to the steps of a large marble building, with The New York Public Library carved over three bronze doors. Inside the lion delivers him to a huge room with towering arched windows, long tables, and many, many thick books on the shelves. But when the boy reaches for one, it seems to leap from his hands....

"Adult books can be difficult to grasp," said the lion.

But in the Children's Room the boy recognizes many books that his grandfather used to read with him--The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Cat in the Hat,--and The Polar Express, which they read together every Christmas before he died. The boy asks to take his favorites home.

"That can be arranged," said the lion

And it is all taken care of, in David Zeltser's latest, The Night Library (Random House, 2019). The New York Public Library's iconic stone lions, Patience and Fortitude, are as good as their word, for on the boy's doorstep the next morning is his own library card, brand-new except for some very large tooth prints!

Emily Dickinson wrote "There is no frigate like a book... to take us lands away," but a pair of iconic stone lions do a pretty good job at that, too, as they reawaken the joy and closeness of sharing a book for the boy in a memorable nighttime journey. Artist Raul Colon's illustrations render the midnight scenes in pale moonlit colors and dreamlike images, along with the solid but fantastic figures of the pale, monumental lions, all juxtaposed with the wispy memories of the boy's grandfather that recapture the magic of reading. "This should please bibliophiles of all ages," says Booklist.

For another flight of storytime fun for Book Week or National Library Week, share this one with Brian Lies' proven kid-pleaser, Bats at the Library (A Bat Book) (review here).