A quote from Valente, found on her GoodReads page: However, I also read that In the Night Garden differs from Nights in that all the stories are interwoven together and connect, relate, support, carry on from one to the next. I’ve read that this is similar to One Thousand and One Nights, but sadly that’s a collection of folk tales I haven’t yet familiarized myself with. Stories are contained within stories, creating a deep and layered narrative. I can’t remember why I picked In the Night Garden to read first but am I glad that I did! I found this to be a lovely story, and I was all the more intrigued when I discovered that it’s Valente’s first work for children but she had published other novels for adults. I am explaining all this so you can see how much I really did love this book – enough to give it 5 stars! 😉 I discovered Valente in the summer when I read The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. So, even though I had a very minor ‘complaint’ about Catch-22, that meant I had to take it down a notch in my personal ranking system. For example, I adored Catch-22 but gave it a 4.5 because it was a pretty hefty book and a bit difficult to follow. (For the curious, the other books that have gotten five stars are Wild, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Kafka on the Shore.) 4.5 stars is also very good, and I would consider books with a 4.5 star rating favourites as well, but what separates 4.5 and 5 is that I had no negative thoughts whatsover about a 5 star book. Whooaa, this is the fourth book I’m giving five stars! For me, that fifth star is very precious and can only be awarded to books I would consider my ‘all-time favourites’.
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