LIGHTS AT NIGHT

A sleepy seasonal ode to the lights that shine after the sun goes down.

Puddles glimmer beneath streetlights as a spring rainstorm chases a suburban family indoors—just in time for the power to go out. While the family shares a cozy bedtime story by flashlight indoors, in the fields outside a fox with two new cubs ventures out beneath the stars. In later months, campfires and Fourth of July fireworks give way to jack-o’-lanterns, after-school football games beneath the lights, nights spent ice-skating beneath shimmering auroral curtains, a holiday get-together at year’s end, and, on the journey home, glimpses of falling snow and shiny fox eyes in the headlights beneath passing trees. The lights, both natural and artificial, cast such warm glows that even in darker scenes, the shadows are never deep in Zeng’s peaceful, idyllic layouts. As she follows an East Asian–presenting human family and a furry four-footed one through the seasons, she tucks in grace notes, from foxlike swirls of sky mist to symbolic candles for Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Hanukkah, on the way to final looks inside and outside: “Lights out. / Night light. / Good night.”

Comforting and snoozy, just right for bedtime reading.