In this evocative and lovely bedtime story, a young boy knows that his window glows warmly “because of us, inside.” A woman tucks him into bed, although a photo on the boy’s nightstand shows him hugged by two men, presumably his dads.
As the boy tries to sleep, he’s bothered by the feeling that he’s lost something. Then he sees (or just imagines?) a pterosaur outside his window. He jumps on the pterosaur’s back to search the sky and the city below.
Finally, the boy spots two men—his dads—on a ship along the river, and swoops down to pick them up. They fly high into a night full of wonder, until the boy falls safely back to his bed and wakes up with his dads alongside him, as his sitter (an aunt, perhaps?) watching lovingly from the side. The boy has found what he lost, and in the book’s final words, offers an affirmation that the reader’s family shines with the same warmth as his.
Author David Barclay Moore’s spare prose is both soothing and compelling as he takes us on the boy’s nighttime journey, enhanced by illustrator Briana Mukodiri Uchendu’s muted palette of blues, purples, and browns. Perfectly beautiful and beautifully perfect. Highly recommended.
The boy and his family are Black.
