Nightlights

What's the title? Nightlights

Who wrote it? Lorena Alvarez Gómez

When was it written? 2017

What star rating would I give it? 3.5/5

Would I recommend it? Yes. If you have little ones, I’d rush to add it to the ranks of the story-time circulation. If you don’t have little ones, I still think all ages can appreciate the magic Alvarez has imbued into this short book’s pages.

What's it about? (non-spoilers) Sandy is an artist. She spends her nights creating fantastical creatures and her days drawing them on paper. One day, a new girl at school compliments Sandy on her drawings. But things are not as they appear, and this small act changes Sandy’s world in unexpected ways. Sandy has to figure out what exactly is going on and how to put it right.

What did you think? (spoilers) The story in Nightlights is lovely – fantastical and adventurous and just so faintly menacing. What’s more, for a children’s story, its ending contains an admirable amount of ambiguity. That’s not to say the story doesn’t feel resolved by its end. It does. The ending’s bow simply isn’t as tightly tied as many children’s tales.

I also appreciated the complexity of the book's messages. Nightlights tackles the ideas of being true to yourself but also the importance of eating your academic vegetables. Sandy’s art matters more to her than anything, and the book never argues against her priorties. However, while Sandy may not value her disapproving nun’s math lessons, it's they, not her art, that ultimately save her.

Her art, while valued, is also what makes Sandy susceptible to Morphie. While her art is the most important thing in her life, other people's flattery of her skill is both a boon to Sandy’s confidence and a perversion of the very thing she loves. It’s a complex message for a children’s book, but Nightlights doesn’t shy from complexity. This is a children’s book whose antagonist is a nod to the mythical god of dreams, a book where the adults and parents are allies and obstacles in equal measure, a book where the heroine is just as fallible as she is forceful.

As much as there was to appreciate in the narrative of Nightlights, it’s not the narrative or even the characters that caused me to enjoy the book so much. It was the art. The art is animated and mesmerizing, full of vivid colors – blues and purples, oranges and greens. Looking at Sandy’s creations inevitably stimulates the reader’s own imagination. Alvarez’s work harkens to her South American upbringing. Sandy’s Catholic school, her route home, her apartment – they all possess the authenticity one receives from an artist having lived those places firsthand. Sandy's worlds, both imagined and real, are a joy to visit.

Nightlights is a dream you can enter while awake, an adventure fit for the young, the old, and those in between.

Images: Goodreads

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