"At the end of the day, before the town goes to sleep, you can look out your window... and see more little windows lit up like eyes in the dusk, blinking awake as the lights turn on inside: a neighborhood of paper lanterns."
A child gazes out the window of his comfortable-looking living room as a little dog impatiently waits to be walked. As the boy gets ready, he looks out the window at the neighbors' dusk activities: children talk to each other from two different balconies, an older couple does yardwork, an older and a younger child walk hand-in-hand down the street.
The child walks the dog out into "the almost-night" of a friendly city neighborhood. He sees a cat and a raccoon, two friends using a tin-can phone and, of course, little slices of life in the windows: "One window might be tall, with the curtains drawn, or small, with a party inside.... There might be a hug, or a piano, and someone might be learning to dance."
Julia Denos's (Swatch) second-person text invites the reader to be an active participant in this pleasing book--you are reading this book, you are looking in the windows, you are a part of this beautiful, flourishing neighborhood. And what a neighborhood it is. The illustrations are sheer joy, giving vibrant glimpses of the everyday through each window. E.B. Goodale brings her very own Somerville to brilliant life in her first picture book, using ink, watercolor, letterpress and digital collage. Each page is awash with the colors of dusk as the sun slowly sets until, finally, "you arrive home again, and you look at your window from the outside. Someone you love is waving at you, and you can't wait to go in." --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness