Bright Lights and Summer Nights is an excellent bedtime or naptime story for infants and children ages 6 months to 4 years old. Inspired by Goodnight Moon, the gorgeous blue and gold illustrations are stunning. Each word is simple and poetically chosen, and the illustrations add a mesmerizing beauty and connotative meaning to each word. The pages are extremely minimal, containing no more than two words each.

The books jumps from the sky to a carnival to firefly fields, to fireworks, capturing the beauty of flames in the darkness across a variety of settings. The colors of the night surrounding yhe glowing flames have a cosy, calming effect on the reader. I really enjoyed the illustrations of this book, but the lack of contrast on particularly bright pages, like the carnival one, make it hard to make out the details of the scene on an LED screen like a phone or a tablet.

I really enjoyed this little beauty of book and I can’t wait until it hits stores. The illustrations are so lovely and it’s a summer treasure.

What a gorgeous book that perfectly captures the essence of summer and childhood and everything that makes that magical. The illustrations are in a lovely pallet of blue, gold, green and white, making you really feel like you are floating through a dream that is summer. This is one of the prettiest books I’ve seen in a long time!

A simple and absolutely gorgeous book. Minimal text, no real plot, just warm summer vibes. I can see little ones really enjoying looking at the art independently.

This is a Children's Book that I read to my twin boys. I found this book to be just ok, and I did not really understand the point the book was trying to make. I also found the pictures in this book to be just ok. I received an ARC of this book. This review is my own honest opinion about the book like all my reviews are.

This is such a beautifully done book! I believe that this book would be best suited for babies due to the simplistic way it's written. However, simple writing isn't always a bad thing! In this case, it works well to teach babies a variety of different nouns that are all centered around a main theme. Adding onto that, I thought that it was very interesting and impressive how the author flawlessly allowed everything to relate to everything else, creating a story that came full-circle in the end. Lastly, I want to touch on the illustrations. They. Were. BREATHTAKING! These pictures really had a lot of great things: light, gradients, detail, playfulness, emotion, etc. I would definitely recommend that caregivers and their children spend a lot of time on this book, both because it's so well done and because of the educational potential. Bravo!

Beautiful pictures, but the story was lacking. This would be better for the younger infant/toddler crowd that doesn’t need much plot.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the ARC! The illustrations are beautiful! I love the bright yellow and soft green colors on the pages. It's a quick and easy read especially for new parents. The use of the word caramel is unclear to me. I would have liked to have seen it end with wording like "baby sleeps tonight." It ends with naming the color white and shows illustrations of the baby sleeping. It would have been nice to have words to go along with the picture and have an end to the story. Overall, I think it's a great children's book. The child would be able to describe what is happening in the pictures as the adult is reading it.

Atmospheric and gorgeously illustrated, this is sure to be a bedtime hit! Such a dreamy way to evoke all the warmest feelings of carefree summer nights.

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for providing me with a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Bright Lights and Summer Nights is a beautiful picture book that is sure to capture readers' attention with its atmospheric illustrations and repetitive text. I've loved all of the books Manbeck has illustrated, and this is no exception. Thank you to Tundra Books and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for the honest review.