Daydreams for Night - by John Southworth & David Ouimet (Hardcover)

About the Book

Thirteen very short stories from acclaimed musician John Southworth will tweak your mind and peak your imagination. Meet the boy with grey hair, who spends his days on a cargo ship peeling potatoes, a strange man who keeps a Ferris wheel in his backyard, and a whale that lives in a manmade lake on the top of a faraway hill. Chock-full of details in their brevity, they beg to be mused over. Equally intriguing and unusual black and white illustrations by David Ouimet bright the strange, bizarre characters to life.

Like songs, these stories and the accompanying illustrations are evocative without limiting, and beg to be replayed.

Book Synopsis

Thirteen very short stories from acclaimed musician John Southworth will tweak your mind and peak your imagination. Meet the boy with grey hair, who spends his days on a cargo ship peeling potatoes, a strange man who keeps a Ferris wheel in his backyard, and a whale that lives in a manmade lake on the top of a faraway hill. Chock-full of details in their brevity, they beg to be mused over. Equally intriguing and unusual black and white illustrations by David Ouimet bright the strange, bizarre characters to life.

Like songs, these stories and the accompanying illustrations are evocative without limiting, and beg to be replayed.

Review Quotes

"A beautifully produced book with distinct black and white, gothic style illustrations by David Ouimet, will undoubtedly get your imagination working and your mind exploring."
Picture Books Blogger

"I would recommend reading this book in the night-time, when the realities of evening fade away. At this time of day, everything is silent and there's nothing to distract you from indulging fully in your imagination."
Cuckoo Review

"This book is beautiful."
The Book Wars blog

"This collection of 13 vignette-like stories from first-time author Southworth, accompanied by Ouimet's haunting b&w illustrations, follows in the tradition of Shaun Tan's Tales of Outer Suburbia and Chris Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. The stories take place in settings and circumstances that are slightly, sometimes disconcertingly, tweaked. In one, a librarian doesn't notice when a sunflower blossoms out of his head; in another, 10-year-old Ester, who sells more cookies than any other Brownie, retires to her room for three years after trying to sell cookies to a ghostly individual at a funeral home (in the full-spread image that follows, Ester totes a wagon-full of cookies across a great lawn, peering back at the estate as birds swarm overhead). Each story stands on its own, yet they are connected through a shared enigmatic quality, offering up intriguing possibilities over explanations. Ages 8-12."
Publisher's Weekly

Praise for John Southworth:

"Is to music what Guy Maddin is to film"
Rich Terfry, CBC Radio

"Canada's best kept secret"
- Stewart Mson, Critical Mob

"A truly true original"
- Steve Guimond, The Hour

"Wonderful, sylvan, sprightly, uber-bolangaire, peculiar and smart"
- film maker Guy Maddin

Reviews for Dare to be Scared, illustrated by David Ouiment:

"The dark, black-and-white, pen-and-ink drawings add an appropriately menacing touch to the stories."
School Library Journal

"One black-and-white illustration per story helps heighten the horror, which is never too tense or graphic for the intended audience."
Booklist

About the Author

John Southworth is one of Canada's most distinctive and iconoclastic music artists. A key collaborator with Toronto's Art of Time Ensemble, he performs regularly with his band The South Seas. Outside of his native Canada, his records have been released in the US, UK and Japan. For more info, go to www.johnsouthworth.ca.

David Ouimet is a New York-based artist and musician. He has illustrated several children's books, and most recently has been experimenting with 19th century medical and scientific illustration techniques to create fine art.