Millie Fleur Saves the Night - Susan Kay Phillips

by Christy Mandin

Reviewed by Susan Kay Phillips

MILLIE FLEUR SAVES THE NIGHT, written and illustrated by Christy Mandin, stands out as a real star.

Millie Fleur La Fae and her mother have moved to the outskirts of Garden Glen. But there is a problem. Garden Glen is afraid of the dark. Every evening, townspeople race home and switch on every light while the town lantern keeper positions lanterns all along the roads and pathways. Night in Garden Glen is as bright as the day.

Millie is troubled by this. Her moon garden is not doing well. Her forty-wink ferns are wilting and Millie has not seen a single night creature since moving to Garden Glen.

Millie’s mother removes the lightbulb from the lantern near their house. Now they have darkness at their home. But the Garden Glen lantern committee finds Millie’s dark and mysterious house very troubling.” It’s dangerous,” warns the mayor. “Who knows what the darkness will bring with it”, says the lantern keeper.

“But the dark is not scary,” Millie tells them. “You just need to get to know her.” The committee is not convinced. The lights stay on in Garden Glen.

Millie cannot bear that her friend, the Dark, has been banished. Something must be done. Millie bakes some moon cakes and marches off into the dark forest to find her friends. Millie finds the Dark and gently leads her back to the night garden. The creatures of the night follow happily along. Now that the Dark is back, Millie’s moon garden comes to life and begins to blossom and sparkle.

Soon, the delightful perfume from Millie’s moonflowers, her twilight tulips and her snoozing sugarplums wafts its way through Garden Glen. Children of the town take their lanterns and follow the beautiful scent to Millie’s front gate. Millie invites them in but only if they will turn off their lanterns. “You’ll have to be brave,” Millie tells them. One by one, the lanterns go out and the nervous children meet the Dark. They enter Millie’s garden which sparkles with bioluminous plants and animals and sends delightful perfume into the air.

Using the outline of the Dark as a picture frame (see cover picture for the depiction of the Dark), Mandin shows the children of Garden Glen becoming comfortable with the creatures of the night. In a particularly beautiful scene, the children and the Dark and Millie stand on a hillside silhouetted against a full moon with stars and shooting stars in the sky. The children realize “… there were things the Dark could share that couldn’t be found in the light.”

Garden Glen begins to change. Lights are switched off at night. The people of Garden Glen embrace the Dark. Night Gardens spring up all over town. The night creatures gradually return. Millie Fleur La Fae has saved the night!

MILLIE FLEUR SAVES THE NIGHT is a wonderful picture book to introduce children to the joys of a dark night. Mandin emphasizes the beauty of the starry night sky and the importance of darkness for the lives of night creatures.

Reviewer’s Note

In the back matter of this book, Mandin introduces the reader to the bioluminous creatures and plants in Millie’s garden. These animals and plants produce bioluminescence through a very efficient light-producing chemical reaction. Millie’s garden contains bioluminescent glowworms, mushrooms, a fungus known as foxfire which can produce a light bright enough to read by, and the much loved lighting bug. These animals and plants depend upon the dark to be seen and carry on their natural life cycle.

There are bioluminescent land creatures and plants such as those in Millie’s garden, but I was interested to learn that the vast majority of bioluminous creatures live in the sea. It is estimated that some seventy-five percent of creatures in the sea rely on some form of bioluminescence to find prey, to escape predators, and to find mates. Some bioluminescent sea creatures can be seen on the sea surface such as bioluminescent algae and sea sparkle. Many others such as the Angler Fish and the Vampire Squid are largely unfamiliar to us because they live deep in the dark zone below one thousand feet where no sunlight can penetrate. For more information on these mysterious and wondrous sea creatures see: https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/stories/bioluminescence

The darkness bioluminescent sea creatures depend upon seems safe from light pollution at the present. Not so for the bioluminescent land creatures. They require our help.

According to DarkSky International, the best way to help preserve our dark nights for all of us is to follow the five principles of outdoor lighting listed below. These five principles help to restore our ability to see the beautiful night sky. At the same time, these principles function to protect all night creatures and our own biological rhythms. For further information see http://darksky.org.

As always, thank you for reading!

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