School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 3-As evening falls, the grotesquely carved guardians on an art museum rise up to peer and prowl, as they gleefully terrify the security guard before reclaiming their perches. The black-and-white pastelseerie, unusual, and utterly creepyare spine-chillingly perfect. (Oct. 1994) (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Moody, charcoal-powder drawings dramatize a tale of the secret life of gargoyles. In a starred review, PW called it "an unusually sophisticated work, playful but dark-edged." Ages 4-8. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
When night falls, the stone gargoyles that embellish a museum façade awaken for an evening of frolic, gossip, lounging in the fountain, and tormenting the frightened watchman. Bunting's lyrical poem, both haunting and comic, paves the way for Wiesner's all-gray palette of substantial and believable gargoyles. From HORN BOOK 1994, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
At night a motley assortment of gargoyles come alive to ``creep on stubs of feet,'' to fly ``if they have gargoyle wings, straight up to lick the stars with long stone tongues,'' or to land in ``sleeping trees.'' But eventually they all gather at a fountain to ``gargoyle-hunch around the rim and gargoyle-grunt with friends from other corners who have come for company'' and complain all night long about the sun, the rain (which ``pours in torrents through their gaping lips and chokes their throats with autumn leaves'') and--of course--the ``humans who have made them so and set them high on ledges where dark pigeons go.'' These monsters, defined at the beginning of the book as waterspouts representing grotesque human or animal figures, come in a variety of forms--all surprisingly unsinister, despite Wiesner's gray palette. Somehow, these gargoyles appear stone-like and cuddly at the same time. Caldecott medalwinner Wiesner's charcoal drawings are as breathtaking as Bunting's prose in this wildly successful attempt to prove what we've always suspected: The gargoyle lives. (Picture book. 4-8)
Booklist Review
Ages 4-8. In a macabre and funny picture book, those stone gargoyles that squat all day on public buildings get free at night and come down from their shadowy corners. Bunting's words are creepy and poetic, scary because they are so physically precise. The stone creatures are "pock-marked," their tongues "green-pickled at the edges." They have unblinking, bulging eyes and their mouths gape like empty suits of armor in museum halls. Wiesner's duotone charcoal illustrations capture the huge heaviness of the stone figures and their gloomy malevolence as they bump and fly and tumble free in the dark. They are so ugly. They're like fiends that come from the graves at night. They're also very human. Wiesner's funniest scene is a double-page spread of a group of gargoyle creatures hunching and grunting together at a spitting water fountain. They could be the gossips and grousers at your local neighborhood hangout. This book is more a situation than a story, but it makes you face what you've always feared but hadn't quite seen. Even the word gargoyle makes you choke. ~--Hazel Rochman
