Flashlight Night is an ode to the power of imagination and the wonder of books. Three children use a flashlight to light a path around their backyard at night; in the flashlight’s beam another world looms. Our heroes encounter spooky woods, a fearsome tiger, a time-forgotten tomb, an Egyptian god, a sword-fighting pirate, and a giant squid. With ingenuity, they vanquish all, then return to their tree house—braver, closer, and wiser than before—to read the books that inspired their adventure. PreS-Gr 2—There's something almost magical about flashlights. Esenwine's poem captures this quality as three children (one brown-skinned and two white) explore a backyard, deck, basement, and tree house under the beam of their torch. The verse is incantatory, summoning jungle beasts, Egyptian tombs, pirate ships, and the like. Koehler's digitally colored pencil drawings cleverly depict what's really in the kids' surroundings while also showing what they are imagining: the edge of an upended vase in the ray of light is revealed to be a part of a baseball in the dark, a bone is actually a knotted rope, the ocean is really the above-ground pool, and so on. VERDICT This is a simple idea that's engagingly executed and would be an excellent, atmospheric read for sleepovers or backyard campouts. A good choice for most collections.—Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Library, NY "In Fred Koehler's broodydark-pencil art, digitally tinted with colors that look cloaked by night, theflashlight's glow illuminates fantastical scenes: a forest where a tiger lurks,a staircase leading to an ancient tomb and so on...Poet Matt Forrest Esenwine's first book favorably recalls Where theWild Things Are , which put the imagination-sparking power of nighttime,with its blank slate-like quality, on the picture book map." - Shelf-Awareness Matt Forrest Esenwine 's picture book  Flashlight Night (Boyds Mills & Kane) received national critical praise and wasselected by the New York Public Library as one of 2017's Best Books for Kids.Others include  Once Upon Another Time  (Beaming Books, 2021), co-authored with Charles Ghigna;  Don't Ask a Dinosaur  (Pow! Kids Books), co-authored with Deb Bruss; and many others. His poetry can be found in numerous anthologies such as  The National Geographic Book of Nature Poetry (National Geographic Children's Books, 2015), Construction People (Wordsong, 2020), and the Donald Hall tribute Except for Love (Encircle, 2019), as well as  Highlights for Children®.  He lives with his family in New Hampshire. Visit mattforrest.com. Fred Koehler won a Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor Award for his illustrations for One Day, The End . He is the author-illustrator of How To Cheer Up Dad , which received three starred reviews, and he is the illustrator of This Book Is Not About Dragons and Puppy, Puppy, Puppy . He lives with his children in Lakeland, Florida. Visit ilikefred.com.