Touch the Brightest Star

The bluebird from Tap the Magic Tree explores the world at night from sunset to sunrise. Throughout, Matheson gives readers actions to take: "Gently press the firefly," and on the next spread the firefly is "lit up." Spacious collage illustrations, child-powered interactivity, and a cyclical quality will send readers back to the beginning for another gentle nighttime. Brief scientific explanations are appended.

The little bluebird from Tap the Magic Tree (rev. 1/14) flies across the first double-page spread as sunset falls: “Magic happens every night. / First wave good-bye to the sun’s bright light.” In the spacious collage illustrations, swaths of pink and purple streak across the bottom of the page, shading to darker blue at the top, and a birch tree stands off to the far left. Turn the page and the reader is instructed to “gently press the firefly” -- and on the next spread, the firefly is “lit up” in the illustration while a deer peeks in from the right outer margin. As in the previous book, Matheson gives readers actions to take for each page, from “swipe the sky,” which is followed on the page turn by a picture of a meteor, to “rub the owls,” which have settled on the birch tree, “on their heads.” She introduces the Big and Little dippers, and at the end the bluebird returns to the tree, and the flowers -- closed up tight throughout -- open up at sunrise. With the constant, comforting tree and the highlighted changes happening nearby, this exploration of the world at night should be inviting to even the very youngest children, who will also enjoy its imagination-fueled and child-powered interactivity. Its cyclical quality will send them back to the beginning again to pass through another gentle, never scary, nighttime. A closing page gives brief scientific explanations of some of the book’s sights. susan dove lempke