The most fascinating thing about this children’s picture book is the way in which the illustrations were done. Author David Frampton created them using woodcuts. Those are like a big stamp, made out of wood, which he then covers in paint and presses down on paper. Every single page in this book was created using four woodcuts, one for each color. After he presses down one woodcut with one shade of paint, he uses another one, dipped in a different shade. The four colors used in this story are purple, yellow, green and black. There’s a touch of pink and red here and there as well.
“The Whole Night Through” takes place in the African jungles, where all the animals are getting ready for bed. The moon is singing a soft lullaby, and it’s drifting down through the leafy bongo tree. The rhino and the egret are sleeping, snuggled up together, and the crocodile is also snoozing. We also peek in at more unusual animals, like the kinkajou and the cockatoo, to find that they’re all asleep. So are the fish – goldfish, guppies, and piranhas. Apparently the only animal not asleep is one happy jaguar!
Monkeys, frogs, and polliwogs are all snoring, but the jaguar has decided he’s not going to bed. He’s going to stay up the whole night through.
The snakes, lions, zebras, and wildebeest are sleeping, and so is the mouse, but the jaguar is wide awake, still. An animal of amazing energy, that jaguar.
We continue our tour of the jungle, meeting animals we might never have seen before, like an eland. But what do we know – that silly jaguar has finally dropped off, and he’s just as asleep as everyone else.
This is a fun nighttime book for parents and children – especially when those children are acting a little bit like jaguars themselves.
(This book was published in 2001 by Harper Collins.)
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