Illustrated by Kyle Brown
Umbrelly Books
I sensed a Winsor McCay vibe as soon as I saw the cover, which only increased whilst flipping its pages. The Night Parade is kind of a Pied Piper variant, the stranger marching through town, though it's not rats in tow, it's dreamstuff, nightmares. It seems every night he makes his rounds, this unnamed man, taking the bad detritus of our subconscious lives with him, and leaving behind only the good.
His footsteps fall in rhythm as he leads this Night Parade, calling out the nightmares and the sweet dreams you've made.
They hear his gentle tapping as they tumble from your head, now leaving you to wonder what you've dreamt of in your head.
I suppose this is meant to be a mollifying fable, but there is something a bit eerie going on as well. You can't see him, you can only hear his footfalls echoing through the empty streets... in Kyle Brown's vision of it, those empty streets are all cobblestone, the building seem to lean in, as though anticipating a whispered secret, and from out of the open windows of the sleeping denizens come the dreams. The man marches on, around the globe.
There's a lot of great thought put into the tone of this book, lots of wonderful detail in the overall design of it. I especially loved the typography used.... it gives it kind of a dream-like, home spun quality to it.
The Magpie opens and closes the tale, and can be seen in some of the illustrations, which gives it even greater mythic undertones.
This has been a sponsored post.
