When the Stars Come Out

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Lily loves her family’s tradition of taking after-dinner walks together, but as summer rolls by and the sun dips lower in the sky, Lily’s fear of the dark begins to grow.

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Lily’s mother points out the wonders of the night sky—from the sparkling constellation of Orion to the glowing trail of the International Space Station passing overhead—but will Lily be able to look up and see the beauty all around her?

Written by astronomer Tanya Hill, who overcame her own childhood fear of the dark and has gone on to spend her career sharing the wonder of the night sky with others.

  • Details: Hardback, 32 pages
  • Author: Tanya Hill
  • Illustrator: Sylvia Morris
  • Publication date: December 2024
  • IBSN: 9781921833694
  • RRP: $24.99
Lily and her mum greet a man and his dog. Lily plays with children at the local playground. Lily imagines the road is an ocean full of flying fish and a large whale tail. The book reads: Sometimes they'd walk around their neighbourhood, shouting, Hello!' to all the people out and about enjoying the evening. Lily gambols along a footpath in 4 images that illustrate time's passage across summer by showing the sun progressively lower in the increasingly darkening sky. The book reads: Lily loved walking with her family, but as the summer rolled by, something started to change. Each week, as they arrived back home, Lily noticed the Sun had sunk a little bit closer to the horizon. The sky was changing too. No longer bring blue, the colour was fading away. It was becoming darker. And that was a problem, because... Lily enters her home garage at dusk and imagines a gigantic legless dragon is hiding there. Lily lies in bed pointing a torch at a globe of the Earth. The book reads: ...Lily was scared of the dark. She didn't like how it did strange things to the world around her. Shadows loomed and stretched, tiny creaks and noises became much too loud. Lily would lie at night, waiting for the morning to come and for the Sun to chase the darkness away. Lily looks out the window noticing stars moving in the sky as the seasons progress. Lily points a torch at the earth next to drawings of constellations. Lily reads a book with her mum about constellations and their stories. The book reads: Lily had so many questions. There was so much she wanted to learn! Why did the stars shine so brightly? And how come, as the seasons changed, she could see different stars in the sky? What stories could the constellations tell her? And where did all the stories come from?

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