Smoky Night

Eve Bunting’s Smoky Night, published in 1994, follows a young boy named Daniel who evacuates his home during the 1992 L.A. riots.  Bunting, an Irish woman, is known for addressing social issues in her writing, and her vision in Smoky Night is brought to life by colorful, collage-like illustrations by artist David Dìaz. The story attempts to show how people of different backgrounds and heritages can come together in a time of crisis. This is done both figuratively, through a subplot about Daniel’s missing cat and the cat of a Korean shop owner, and literally, as Daniel and his mother are aided in their evacuation by their neighbors.

While Bunting may succeed in telling a heartwarming story about neighbors coming together, she fails to contextualize the rioting and looting seen at the beginning. Rioting is described simply as something that “…can happen when people get angry,” and rioters as people “…who want to smash and destroy, they don’t care anymore about what’s right and what’s wrong.” This simplification is problematic, as it doesn’t attempt to explain to children the reasons behind the rioters’ actions, and why they might be motivated to “…smash and destroy.” It reads as an outright condemnation of the rioters, which is especially troubling coming from an author like Bunting, who would not have experienced the conditions they faced, and would be unlikely to understand their anger. 

- Maxwell Roberts