On a blistering hot moonlit night in South India, a girl and her mother ride together on a motorbike to beat the heat and take in the sights in Maureen Shay Tajsar’s lush, atmospheric Midnight Motorbike. “On a night like tonight,” the girl’s Amma tells her, “we are in the belly of the Indian moon.” Their ride is a luxuriant lullaby, a time of togetherness as well as a feast for the eyes and the senses.
Young readers will be transported by “flashes of snake eyes and bougainvillea in our motorbike headlight.” The pair pass silk shops, temples and an elephant who gives the narrator a kiss—which her mother tells her is good luck. Tajsar’s prose provides a sensory travelogue as the young rider smells “steaming silver-cupped chai, spicy potato-stuffed masala dosas, and the warm hay of an elephant’s bed.”
Ishita Jain’s art vividly evokes the night sky with a deep blue background, against which big splashes of vivid color pop. Amma’s bright orange sari swirls into the air, framing the sunset over the Bay, while the huge white moon looms like a giant in the sky. Throughout, Amma’s orange sari and the motorbike’s orange headlights help light the way, providing a line of focus on this fascinating tour of a South Indian night.
While this mother-daughter adventure ignites the senses, as the narrator is finally lulled to sleep by the end, it also becomes a poignant salute to the love between parent and child. Midnight Motorbike is an exciting and ultimately comforting ode to adventure, observation and love.