N IS FOR NETHERLANDS

I’m a sucker for good illustration so I immediately wanted to read this book the minute I saw it. The style appeals to me so! Besides, I wanted to share this with my partner and our mole because one of our favorite things to do is to walk by buildings in the twilight and look into the people’s windows, imagining what happens inside, what their lives are like, and how we would act if we were to live there. And this is exactly what the little boy-protagonist of “Night Windows” does after he moves to a new city where he doesn’t have any friends. The story is simple and sweetly socialist, while the illustrations are so rich that they offer a lot for the imagination: you could read this book over and over again, and imagine different plot lines just from looking at the pictures. I would have loved it as a kid, and I equally loved it as an adult.

Night Windows by Aart-Jan Venema
Published by Cicada Books in 2019