Jodi Toering (text) and Tannya Harricks (illustrator), Night watch, Walker Books, January 2024, 40 pp., RRP $26.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781760655310
Night watch is a picture book with poetic text that vividly conjures a snug and peaceful bedtime scenario, describing various Australian animals settling to sleep under the safe watch of two tawny frogmouth birds, flying overhead.
I was especially impressed with author Toering’s original imagery and metaphors. To name a few – “Koala’s baby …… safe in the arms of their tree” and “Over oceans of wheat, swelling, swaying …”. I also love the text’s satisfying repeated pattern, with a sentence referencing the landscape followed by one describing an animal, on a double spread page.
Harricks’ oil paintings of visible, energetic, bold marks and brushstrokes add extra meaning to the text by conjuring the colours and sense of darkened Australian landscapes and realistically depicting animals’ features and their activity. I especially love the images of the tawny frogmouths’ beady owl-like eyes and their powerful, outspread flying wings.
A book about tawny frogmouths is special for me because I loved spotting these fabulous nocturnal birds asleep and camouflaged in the trees of my garden, when I lived close to the bush.
Even if the language of Night watch is somewhat sophisticated for a typical picture book audience (3-7 years), it has a soothing tone well suited to a calming bedtime routine, and the images of our beautiful native animals are works of art.
Reviewed by Barbara Swartz