School Library Journal Starred Review

K-Gr 3-What child hasn't looked at a sculpture or creatures carved in stone and wondered what would happen if they came to life? Bunting's canny phrasing and Wiesner's ominous black-and-white illustrations answer the question perfectly. When night comes, the gargoyles on a museum building come alive. They gargoyle-hunch'' with friends around a fountain,rumble-laugh'' at the night watchman, and resume their stone facades with empty eyes unblinking when morning arrives. If anyone could bring gargoyles to life pictorially, it's Wiesner. High-rise angles and perspectives are peopled with pigeons and squirrels; light is played against dark, forming menacing shadows; spreads and panels zoom in on narrow and wide-angle views; all creating a delicously eerie, spooky scenario. The brief text cunningly induces liveliness and wit with well-honed word choices: ``they grunt of what they've seen...they grump of summer passing...they boom those gargoyle laughs that rumble thick because there is no space inside their solid stone for laughs to somersault.'' This is not for very young children, but it's sure to have enormous appeal for older audiences. From stony-eyed stares to their merry scorn of humans, it's gargoyle gleefulness.-Julie Cummins, New York Public Library

ALA Booklist (Sat Oct 01 00:00:00 CDT 1994)

In a macabre and funny picture book, those stone gargoyles that squat all day on public buildings get free at night and come down from their shadowy corners. Bunting's words are creepy and poetic, scary because they are so physically precise. The stone creatures are pock-marked, their tongues green-pickled at the edges. They have unblinking, bulging eyes and their mouths gape like empty suits of armor in museum halls. Wiesner's duotone charcoal illustrations capture the huge heaviness of the stone figures and their gloomy malevolence as they bump and fly and tumble free in the dark. They are so ugly. They're like fiends that come from the graves at night. They're also very human. Wiesner's funniest scene is a double-page spread of a group of gargoyle creatures hunching and grunting together at a spitting water fountain. They could be the gossips and grousers at your local neighborhood hangout. This book is more a situation than a story, but it makes you face what you've always feared but hadn't quite seen. Even the word gargoyle makes you choke. (Reviewed October 1, 1994)

Horn Book

When night falls, the stone gargoyles that embellish a museum façade awaken for an evening of frolic, gossip, lounging in the fountain, and tormenting the frightened watchman. Bunting's lyrical poem, both haunting and comic, paves the way for Wiesner's all-gray palette of substantial and believable gargoyles.

Kirkus Reviews

At night a motley assortment of gargoyles come alive to creep on stubs of feet,'' to flyif they have gargoyle wings, straight up to lick the stars with long stone tongues,'' or to land in sleeping trees.'' But eventually they all gather at a fountain togargoyle-hunch around the rim and gargoyle-grunt with friends from other corners who have come for company'' and complain all night long about the sun, the rain (which pours in torrents through their gaping lips and chokes their throats with autumn leaves'') and—of course—thehumans who have made them so and set them high on ledges where dark pigeons go.'' These monsters, defined at the beginning of the book as waterspouts representing grotesque human or animal figures, come in a variety of forms—all surprisingly unsinister, despite Wiesner's gray palette. Somehow, these gargoyles appear stone-like and cuddly at the same time. Caldecott medalwinner Wiesner's charcoal drawings are as breathtaking as Bunting's prose in this wildly successful attempt to prove what we've always suspected: The gargoyle lives. (Picture book. 4-8)"

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Moody, charcoal-powder drawings dramatize a tale of the secret life of gargoyles. In a starred review, PW called it """"an unusually sophisticated work, playful but dark-edged."""" Ages 4-8. (Sept.)