Into This Night We Are Rising

This ethereal bedtime book features a flock of children who float out of their bedroom windows and up into the night sky; a luscious, poetic text (``The day is a flower . . . there are petals of soft light in our hair''); and appropriately dreamy artwork. Reminiscent at times of the flying sequence in Raymond Briggs's The Snowman , the nocturnal escapades of London's multicultural cast include a pillow fight amid the clouds, a frolic with the animals in the constellations, a starlight serenade and a final, hand-in-hand descent ``through the wild darkness . . . past the giant trees of earth'' and home to bed. Beautifully suited to reading aloud, the hushed cadences of London's prose blend felicitously with the background illustrations, a gentle combination of soft colored pencil, collage and pastels. Karas fills the spreads with whimsically surreal images: in the serenade scene, for example, the clouds and stars are cutouts, made from musical scores (``A Light Night Music,'' ``Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star''). Children's BOMC main selection. Ages 3-8. (May)