Night Job by Karen Hesse (review)

On Friday nights, our young narrator and his father put on their helmets, get on Dad's motorcycle, and head out to Dad's job at a school. While Dad cleans the gym floor, the boy shoots baskets; father and son eat their nocturnal lunch in the dark, quiet courtyard; Dad buffs the library while the kid reads aloud to him from a library sofa. Finally the boy dozes off, wakened only when his father is finished, and the two zoom back home just as the rest of the world is rising. The text is soft-spoken wish-fulfillment, from the motorcycle ride to the wander around the empty school to the protagonist's working alongside his father ("We tack back and forth down the hallway, sweeping the school from stem to stern"), and Hesse has an unerring ear for the kind of detail that brings a nighttime outing with Dad to life. Karas' mixed-media art has his familiar grainy colored pencil lines and cozy homemade flair; the play with light is particularly impressive, as doorways and lamps softly spill light areas into the slatey night that gradually warms to a taupey morning. An intoxicating blend of special adventure and one-to-one Dad time, this would be an interesting partner to Phi's father-son outing in A Different Pond (BCCB 9/17).