This collection of poems deliberately sets out to challenge negative associations of the image of the dark. As the author states in her afterword, the association of darkness with evil and ignorance has often led to racism and violence. Her project is to reclaim the dark as a positive image. “Night was one of God’s first great acts of creation,” she says.

In keeping with this agenda, Huntly’s poems are celebrations of the world, especially the nighttime world and its beauties. And they celebrate this world from a child’s perspective. Many of them focus on bedtime activities: baths, snuggling under the covers, singing songs. The poems embrace an inclusive spirituality; God is playful, accessible, nurturing, and neither male nor female. Chao Yu’s lovely, whimsical illustrations depict children of all races and colours, thus reinforcing this inclusiveness.

Some poems are simple meditations (“Does God take naps?/ Perhaps”) while others, such as “After a Very Bad Day,” explore the nature of prayer in more challenging ways: “God I don’t want to pray,/ so please go away/ and I’ve nothing to say, anyway./ I’ve had a terrible, horrible,/ no good, miserable,/ never-want-another-one-like-it/ very bad day!”

Huntly’s rhymes occasionally falter, and one poem (“God Be With”) is little more than a rhyming list of names. Nevertheless, most of these poems work, and families wishing to introduce young children to simple spiritual concepts will find much to delight them here, both in the poems themselves and in Yu’s beautiful pictures.