Orion and the Dark
Emma Yarlett
Templar Publishing pbk
The idea that dark is all embracing is wonderfully demonstrated in this story wherein we join young Orion as he confronts his greatest fear.

(There’s a nod to Lemony Snicket and Jon Klassen’s The Dark here.)
“I’ve had enough of you DARK! I wish you and your SCARY SOUNDS, your MURKY MONSTERS and your PITCH BLACKNESS would just GO Away!” he yells into the darkness of his bedroom and beyond. Dark however, has other plans and slips in through the skylight. Imagine how Orion is feeling right then. Despite his fear almost beyond imagining, Orion is a well-mannered lad and holds out his hand to greet his visitor. So begins an adventure wherein thanks to the intruder, Orion discovers that some of the darkest places can actually be fun. And those scary bangs, rustles, creaks, growls and all the other scary outside noises are not at all frightening. Just one more job to do now …
Off the two soar, into the night sky – the darkest of all places and it’s there that Orion really and truly concludes that even he cannot possibly be scared of his new friend DARK, a friend that will never be far off and will always return bang on time.

There is plenty to amuse and just that slight frisson of fear for readers within the covers of this one. Children particularly delight in the large reaching hand of Dark as it moves across the page to shake Orion’s hand

and to bid him au revoir at the end of the “SUPER DUPER, SPIFFADOCIUS, INCREDAMUNDO”, as our young narrator describes his adventure.
If you share this story with a group make sure they have opportunities to explore the wealth of detail – visual and verbal – in and around the illustrations; indeed in many places, words and pictures are an integrated whole. I love the benevolent, almost amorphous portrayal of Dark, Orion’s notepad jottings and sketchbook problem-solving ‘thinks’ bubbles,

oh, and the scatterings of stars – on the narrator’s onesie and in other places throughout; pretty much the whole inky everything in fact.
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The Duck and the Darklings
Glenda Millard and Stephen Michael King
Allen and Unwin
Dark in this story is a place, not a comfortable place but a broken, battered one and has been so for a very long time. In this land of Dark, in a loving hole, lives a small child, Peterboy with his Grandpapa; the two share everything. Peterboy goes out with his fellow ‘Darkling childs’ searching the finding fields for things that will bring light to Grandpapa’s eyes: this he does by painting word pictures of things from the outside. Then one day he returns with not quite the scrap of wonderfulness he’d searched and wished for : instead he brings a very poorly Idaduck with little more than hope for a heartbeat. Grandpapa agrees to let her stay only till she’s better, warning of attachment and wanderlust.

So, Idaduck stays.

Grandpapa mends: Idaduck comforts. As Grandpapa’s happiness grows so too does his fondness for the duck but Peterboy is troubled, knowing the emptiness that will be left if she goes.
“Tell her about the long-ago,” he begs, so Grandpapa draws on his ‘magnificent remembery’ setting free ‘a symphony of stories’ until all his tales are told. Even so the wind calls to their beloved Ida. Peterboy and duck sit sadly side by side in the darkness till Grandpapa suggests a fare-thee-well never to be ‘disremembered’, one which will cause the stars to shine when people talk of it.
Peterboy summons all the Darklings, old and young, wearing their candle hats, to a clearing for a great gathering.

There’s dancing and singing and then Peterboy tells them all of Idaduck; how she has reignited the stars in Grandpapa’s eyes and that now the time has come to bid her farewell. Standing stock still, the old ones are ashamed at the hurt they’ve done to the earth and seeing how now, forests and flowers have grown anew healing earth’s wounds. And then it’s time for Idaduck to take to the air.

Off she soars watched by those below who now have hearts full, not of dark but of hope.
Occasionally a picture book comes along that moves me to tears; this is one of those rare ones that does just that and not only at the first reading…
Indeed reading Glenda Millard’s words aloud is like having a small symphony playing in one’s ears so memorable are they and so melodic. This is truly a story that reverberates long after the book has been put down and one to return to over and over.
Beautiful too are King’s mixed-media illustrations, which, like the relationships between Grandpapa, Peterboy and Idaduck, exude tenderness and love.

These finely drawn characters stand out starkly against the all-encompassing dark that surrounds them at the start as well as the glorious glow of sunlight and hope of the book’s final pages.
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