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Smoky Night

Smoky Night

Author: Eve Bunting
Illustrator: David Diaz
Genre: Historical Fiction
Award: The Caldecott Medal
Grade: 1st grade and up


This is a story about a boy named Daniel and his mother who lives in an apartment. As they are about to sleep, there are a bunch of noises outside. People are stealing from Mrs. Kim’s store and people are rioting along the streets. They do not go to Mrs. Kim’s store because her mother prefers to buy from their own kind of people. Daniel explained how Mrs. Kim’s cat does not get along well with his cat. There’s a fire in their apartment and they are moved in a church shelter, but Daniel’s really worried about his cat. Once they are all settled in the church hall, the firefighter came and brought two cats. One of them is the Daniel’s and the other is Mrs. Kim’s. The little boy asked where the cats were and the firefighter said they were together underneath the stares. The boy was shocked because he thought the two cats do not get along well but turned out they did. Mrs. Kim then invited both of them for coffee sometimes and Daniel and his mother agreed.

This book emphasized that color does not matter and that as a community we should help one another. I would read this out loud to my students because it delivers a good lesson and the illustrations are unique. The illustrations are mixed with water color, pastels, actual pictures, and outlines along the pages. The visual representation of the characters is unique for it does not portray actual skin color and it is unique of its own. The art is really mixed with papers, actual materials, and paintings.


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