"This is the car that sputters and runs
as they load up the couch, still warm from the sun ...
... to go on a trip that they take every night
with their dog in the back and their couch tied tight."
Oh, I love this book! Always a city kid, I rarely had the chance to immerse myself in the wonders of the outdoors where nighttime brought deep darkness. Reading it evokes memories of family visits with relatives who lived in rural Saskatchewan, and the many treasures that found space in yards and fields nearby. A dentist's chair, an old tractor, abandoned cars and other implements provided endless games during our visits.
In this house in the hills, the family's yard sports a rusted old car up a rutted road and beneath the trees. Near the house is a couch, just sitting in that yard. Put the two together and you have an adventure waiting to happen. There are people there who know just what to do to get that car started, to get the sofa loaded on the car's roof, and to set off on a nightly trip along gravelly roads up the mountains and down, where abandoned cars litter a field. Once there, imagination has free rein to fly them over and above the field of cars into the beauty of a moonlit night where stars shine and the warm glow offers peaceful wonder.
Their adventure ends and they return home -
"where a car and a couch aren't thrown away -
where they fly in the night and sleep in the day."
A walk back to the house under the moonlit sky is filled with family love, and a readiness to head out again tomorrow. The cumulative rhyming text and atmospheric digital illustrations put readers in a place of beauty and serenity, where the family finds joy in being together in the wonders of the world that is theirs.
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