Night Driving

by John Coy, Peter McCarty (Illustrator)

A father and son drive into the night. As the sky turns shades of deep blue and purple they watch for night animals, swap baseball stories, and keep a lookout for eighteen wheelers. But they have miles to go before they can sleep, and it's a real challenge to stay awake for a whole night of driving.

Celebrating the relationship between a father and his son, John Coy's spare, poetic text and Peter McCarty's striking black-and-white drawings (complete with gas pumps, cafes, and truck stops) capture the warmth and nostalgia of a very special road trip.

Genres: Picture Books, Family, Childrens, Road Trip, Young Adult, Travel

32 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 1996

About the author

John Coy is the author of young adult novels, the 4 for 4 middle-grade series, and fiction and nonfiction picture books. John has received numerous awards for his work including a Marion Vannett Ridgway Award for best first picture book, a Charlotte Zolotow Honor, Bank Street College Best Book of the Year, Notable Book for a Global Society, and the Burr/Warzalla Award for Distinguished Achievement in Children’s Literature. He lives in Minneapolis and visits schools around the world.

Reviews

[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I loved this old-fashioned, straightforward tale of a father and son driving through the night, I suspect it has limited appeal for today's screen-addicted, action-hungry children. The author takes a seemingly unimportant event - the long drive to go camping in the mountains, done at night so it will be cooler with less traffic - and turns it into a father and son bonding event the young boy will remember for the rest of his life.

Peter McCarty's dark, monochromatic illustrations beautifully capture the quiet mood of the tale.


I especially enjoyed the stop at the diner for breakfast.

Yum!

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slow and quiet in the way a nighttime drive is.

A father and son book. A book to learn about a roadtrip. A soak up all the details of your surroundings book.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweet story of a young boy driving at night on the way to a camping trip.

[John Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written and illustrated story by John Coy and Peter McCarty. The story is about a father and son driving through the night. There is not a lot of color to the artwork (the illustrations are done in pencil) but this creates a wonderful mood that is quiet and peaceful. The pictures supplement the text well, and could help younger students decode words and comprehend the text. In the future, I will have this book available in the classroom for students to read, but I probably wouldn't include it in the reading curriculum. If I did include it in a lesson, it would be a read aloud book.

[Juliette Hernandez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about a boy and his father who are going on a road trip. The father tells the boy that they are going to drive at night. The father and the boy bond throughout the night. They talk about baseball and about the moon, even the deer who are on the side of the road. They got a flat tire and they still bonded over baseball when the boy told his dad to watch him throw a fast one. This book showed me that you can bond over anything. Communication is a huge factor in this because without communication the bonding moment they shared together wouldn't have happened. I really loved this book because it reminded me of when I use to go on road trips with my family, and how much we would bond with one another over the funniest things. It's an amazing book.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I attended a young author's conference as a young girl and had the opportunity to meet MN author John Coy. I opened the book tonight and a letter fell out that he had written in response to one I wrote to him.

I love this book because it reminds me of drives with my dad - the 2 of us the only ones awake in the vehicle while my brothers and mom dozed, watching for wildlife, talking about memories and life from long ago, and just enjoying the bond between a loving, caring, self-less father and his daughter. ❤

[Tiffany · Rating 2 out of 5]

This story made driving at night seem dangerous and risky. A father and son drove all night without sleep. The father poured coffee while driving and made his son steer the car. There were no other cars on the road and they had to change a flat tire. They stopped on the side of the road to use a stinky outhouse. Finally, they took a break at a diner before reaching the mountains, where they planned to set up a tent to camp. All this without any sleep? It sounds crazy to me.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who doesn't love a road trip?

This one is the best of all possible road trips with a father and son doing a trip so long they decide to do some of it at night. The conversation has no hurry and the father tells stories of his childhood and his own father to his son.

The son appreciates the extended attention from Dad and stays up all night with him to keep him company. After breakfast, they realize they made it 'out West.' The illustrations give the book a timeless quality.

[Cynthia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was published in 1996, but the drawings/illustrations make it look like 1946.... very nostalgic, of a 'quite a long time ago' era/time. Nice drawings done in black/white accompany the story of a boy & his dad on a car trip, driving at night.

[Kari · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is so accurate, as I now know--a Coloradan adult. But let's be honest: as a kid growing up on the east coast, in the land of deciduous trees and rivers a mile or more wide and over 100 feet deep, this book would have been Greek to me.

[Susan Kosel · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite children’s book.

[Tony Pope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Black/white illustrations and a wonderfully written story pulls you into a night-time adventure between a boy and his father sometime in the past.

[Pinky · Rating 4 out of 5]

A night drive with his dad leads a young boy and his father to their campsite.

[Alana · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a little dated, both with illustrations and with some of the writing, but it's a nostalgic story of first road trip with dad, and full of forming sweet memories.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

A father and son embark on an all-night road trip sometime in the 1950’s and, to keep each other awake, tell stories, play games and watch the world around them. A perfect bed-time book, Dude & I read this together - he read one page, I read the next - and both of us really enjoyed it. Thankfully, he & I have a very close relationship and it was nice to draw parallels to ourselves with the unnamed father and son in the book, especially the easy way they talked and experienced things together. More of a mood piece than anything else, this is really quite beautiful (“same moon, but out here, it’s so much brighter”) and nicely observed (“stopping for breakfast is my favourite part of driving at night”), perfectly enhanced by the pencil illustrations of Peter McCarty which resemble bleached-out black & white photographs. I loved it, Dude loved it and both of us now want to go on a night-drive! Very highly recommended.

[Brendan]

John Coy is a native Minnesotan with nostalgic memories of road trips in his youth. This particular story is about a father and son driving through the night, heading west, for the mountains. It is a truly all American story. The father and son discussing baseball, showing his son how to change a flat tire, and looking up at the night stars searching for the big dipper. All in a all the illustrations in this book really make it my favorite. They not only extend what the story is telling but at times displays something new and different. The blurriness of the drawings depicts mystery of darkness, driving at night, but also conveys the mystery of a different era. It truly illuminates John Coy's trip back in time.

[Jesse Lasarte · Rating 4 out of 5]

The illustrations for this book are of high quality. McCarty used pencil drawings of a boy and his father taking an all night drive to the mountains. The story is set in the 50’s and Peter does a wonderful job of capturing the 50’s lifestyle. There are illustrations of 50’s dinners, and the boy and his father are driving in a huge 50’s sedan. It is a great book for young readers to connect with a different era. My only criticism is that the story is not as interesting as some of his other stories. That is, the theme (a boy with his father) is charming, but not particularly memorable.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

An understated story that illustrates the power and beauty of a parent spending time with a child without distractions. The author is from Minnesota and the book recalls a fairly specific time and place.

[Deb Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book perhaps because of all the memories I had driving to the mountains with my father, or the memories of the conversations in the car with my own children. Car conversations are the best.

[Magda · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Same moon, but out here, it's so much brighter."

"Stopping for breakfast is my favorite part of driving at night."

[Ubalstecha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully illustrated, simple story of a father and son's nighttime journey to their campsite. Nice to read aloud, but not a story that will stick with you.

[Siomara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like this story because it shows the bond created between a father and son on something simple as an overnight drive. It's these little memories that stick with you as you grow.