Smoky Night

Bibliographic Information: Bunting, E. (1994). Smoky Night. Illus. David Diaz. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace & Company.

Brief Annotation: A riot breaks out in a city street as a mother, her son, and their cat watch through their apartment window. They are woken up in the middle of the night to find that there is a fire and they must evacuate the building. They are forced to leave without their cat. The cat assists in creating a friendship among them and a woman of a different decent, reinforcing the idea of being friends no matter your background.

Genre: Fiction: Picture book, Fiction

Grade Level: 1-6

Readers who will like this: Children who are exposed to others with different cultures than their own; Children who are unsure of people who are different from them; Children with cats.

Response/Rating: 4; Wow! This book was amazing. At first when I was reading it I had mixed feelings about it. I couldn’t believe that a children’s book was going so into detail about a riot and the ugly of the city, but as the book began to end I realized that the true meaning of the book was more important than the riot. The details in the picture were AMAZING! I loved the mixed media throughout, each reflecting what the page said. GREAT BOOK!

One question you would ask before a read aloud: What are your friends like? What do you look for in a friend?