"One dark night, lightning flashes. Count the seconds before the thunder rolls..." It's an experience that's universal - everyone remembers the magic of a thunderstorm when you're young. Hazel Hutchins decided it was the perfect subject matter for a children's book, since she still cherishes that same magic. The book's jacket says the Hutchins "has long admired the power of summer storms - whether on the prairies of her childhood, or in the mountains of her current home...Alberta, Canada."
There's fireflies on the title page, since Hutchins has dubbed her book "One Dark Night." But it's the illustrations, by Susan Kathleen Hartung, that really bring the evening to life. The curtains blow in a little boy's bedroom as a far-away cloud lights with a glow from distant lightning. There's a dark silhouette of leaves over the cloud, and "something small and dark is looking back," the boy realizes.
Hartung contributes the perfect drawing of the silhouette staring back with tiny green cat's eyes. That's because it's a stray cat lurking in the tree, and the little boy lets it into the house. Hutchins describes it beautifully - "soft as whispers, gray as dawn." But as the next bolt of lightning strikes, the cat runs back into the night...after leaving a tiny kitten behind.
Hartung lives on a renovated farmhouse in Michigan that's over 140 years old, according to the book, and a lot of the book's personality comes from her drawings of the little boy - a redhead with freckles, staring in helpless wonder at the mysterious night. But the real star is the green-eyed cat, who scratches at the door, then returns with another kitten. And there's a third character - the approaching storm itself. The events are interrupted by the "baroom" of its thunder clap. And Hartung combines them all in a great picture which shows wild splatters of rain on the window as the book stares up at the rain -with tiny kittens in the background.
There's a simple poetry to Hutchins' text, describing the "wild, white brightness" of the lightning in the sky. The cat carries another kitten, "wet as water, black as night." And I love how the book ends, with the three kittens curled up against their mother cat, who's described as "licking, nudging, and arranging her family." In the end, the book wasn't about the rainstorm after all. It's about the wonderful thing that happened during it - a stray cat suddenly deciding to join their family!