I wrote about the lovely and lyrical picture book, LIGHTS OUT, when it released in 2020. I hope you'll take a moment to click on that link and read about this remarkably powerful and gently persuasive book. It takes a creative approach to the animals' struggles when light pollution disrupts countless generations of evolutionary adaptations. I highly recommend that title and think of it often, especially during the two seasonal bird migration periods in Spring and Fall.
If you are reading this as it posts live, you are smack in the midst of a several-week migration of birds from the southern regions to the north. Some birds travel established migration patterns for hundreds of miles, and others whose flyways cross thousands of miles. Science is studying but still has much to learn regarding how those paths remain so predictably consistent, how birds navigate them. Many are birds who have never traveled those paths. What we can do to learn from them, about how they do it, matters. In the meantime, everyone is certain that most birds include moonlight and starlight (yes, stars are used in some sort of magnetic compass orientation) so that LIGHT, of the natural sort, is essential to their success.
EERDMANS BOOKS for Young Readers, 2026
WHO HID THE STARS: How Light Pollution Changes our World is written by Valentina Gottardi, Macie J. Michno, and illustrated by Danio Miserocchi. The translation by Sylvia Notini is masterful in capturing the complex text with a fluency and clarity that serves the authors well. This is a thorough examination of the impact of light pollution not only on birds but on water life, plant life, insects, communication among members of species, and many light's impacts that we directly observe (road kill, bugs zappers, and more) on a daily basis.
A Kirkus review calls the illustration "razzle-dazzle art", and I concur. The back matter and embedded-in-text suggestions for ways to modify our human activities allow young people not only to change their own habits but to become advocates for protection of the night skies.
To learn more about light pollution, check out
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