School Library Journal Starred Review (Wed Mar 01 00:00:00 CST 2017)

K-Gr 3This stunning ode to the "blue hour" celebrates the time of day between sunset and night. Beginning with endpapers that itemize more than 30 evocatively named shades of blue (peacock, azure, periwinkle, celadon), the striking oversize spreads feature richly textured images of blue mammals, sea creatures, birds, insects, and plants, many of whose "blueness" extends to their name. "A blue fox slips through the arctic cold. Among the water lilies, blue poison dart frogs gather, croaking to each other." While the text is spare, it manages to convey the peace that befits the transition from day to night in the natural world. But the glory of this book is the majestic illustrations, drawn in a fine scratch art style. As twilight progresses, the underlying oranges and yellows in feathers, wings, and leaves glow against the deepening blue until darkness leaves nothing but a brilliant moon, stars, and silhouettes. The final page includes a map showing where each of the animals can be found. VERDICT With its calming tone and gorgeous visuals, this title is a unique choice for bedtime collections and a glorious introduction to the natural world.—Teri Markson, Los Angeles Public Library

ALA Booklist (Sat Oct 01 00:00:00 CDT 2016)

In a bevy of brilliant blues, from porcelain and cyan to ultramarine (annotated swatches of these and 29 others adorn the opening endpapers), Simler illuminates the enchanting period between sunset and nightfall. Punctuated by the "piercing cry" of a blue jay, the onset of the blue hour, rendered in icy, incandescent blues, spurs last-minute motion: poison dart frogs croak, feathered songbirds sing, and vulturine guinea fowl flock together. Yet, as night falls d Simler's palette darkens e natural world is enveloped in quiet. While Simler's appropriately spare text (one sentence per two-page spread) lends the tale a lullaby lilt, it is her finely detailed, scratch art like illustrations that take center stage. Infusing bursts of golden yellows (in the wings of the blue morpho butterfly) and glowing orange-reds (in the shell of a snail) into a unifying blanket of blue, Simler not only interweaves species from across the globe (as indicated by a map provided in the concluding endpapers), but also showcases the utter radiance of its individual wonders. A sparkling selection suited for lulling little ones into blue hours of their own.

Kirkus Reviews

A visual rhapsody in blue.The front endpapers of this slightly oversized picture book offer 32 daubs of blue ranging in value from pale blue to midnight blue, giving readers a sense of what's to come. The opening text relates, "The day ends. / The night falls. / And in between… / there is the blue hour." This is printed in blue, natch, on a pale-blue sky. As readers turn the pages, they are introduced to a dizzying variety of blue creatures, some generic (blue-feathered songbirds, silver-blue sardines) and others exotically specific (vulturine guineafowl, blue monkeys, blue poison dart frogs). As the titular "blue hour" progresses, page backgrounds deepen, until the final page, which presents silhouettes of many of the animals and plants described against a midnight-blue, star-spangled sky. Taken individually, each image dazzles, from an astonishing close-up of a blue morpho butterfly to an expansive landscape, the slightly paler-blue silhouette of a Russian blue cat slinking off in the bottom right-hand corner. Taken all together, however, there is a frustrating lack of definition, as these flora and fauna do not all inhabit one biome or even time zone, as the rear endpapers, a map of the world with white silhouettes of the animals placed where they are found, attest. This dismantles the inviting conceit of the "blue hour" as an organizational concept. Lovely, if poorly hung together. (Picture book. 4-8)