By Emma Yarlett
Orion is scared of nearly everything and most of all the Dark, so the Dark turns up in his bedroom one night to show him what he's been missing.
Orion is afraid of a long list of things, and he'll tell you all of them: wasps, spiders, dogs, girls, getting his head stuck in railings, monsters under the bed. But the worst thing, the very worst, is the Dark. So one night the Dark comes to see him. Not to frighten him, just to say hello, because the Dark has noticed that Orion doesn't like him much and would rather like to fix that. And off they go, out into the night together, through die-cut holes and torch beams and pages that open into black, looking at all the things the Dark has been quietly taking care of while Orion has been under the covers with his eyes shut. By the end Orion has been to some remarkable places in his bunny slippers, and the thing he was most afraid of in the world has turned into the friend who walks him home.
The Dark is friendly from the moment it opens its mouth, which is what makes this the joyful one on the shelf rather than the brave one. There's no build-up of dread and nothing to survive; the scary thing shows up on page five and turns out to want to be pals. What's left is a whole book of night as an adventure, all torchlight and holes in the page and places you can only go when the sun's down. If your child has decided the dark is against them personally, this reframes the entire night shift as something that has been looking after them all along. It's also the busiest and funniest book here, so it holds a child who finds quieter bedtime books boring.