When Cat and Mouse stay out late to play, they have fun until it gets dark and they hear strange noises. But then they meet a new friend, Owl. "Don't be afraid," he tells them. "It's a beautiful night." Cat and Mouse don't understand. How can it be beautiful when it's so dark and scary? So Owl invites them to reconsider night, from a vantage point at the top of his tree.
In the third of his Cat and Mouse books, Tomek Bogacki -- whose fables for the very young have been likened to those of Leo Lionni -- confronts children's fear of the dark by showing them an alternative in his soothingly beautiful nighttime pictures.