Tippy and the Night Parade

By Lilli Carré. Published by Toon Books.

Softcover, 32 pages, Colour, 2014. 

When Tippy wakes up, there's a peacock in her bedroom, a bird in her hair, and mice dancing on the headboard... Yet all Tippy remembers is falling asleep. In her first book for children, award-winning cartoonist Lilli Carré takes Tippy on a nocturnal adventure up a mountain, down a hole, and back home for endless bedtime enjoyment.

Lilli Carré grew up in California and now lives in Chicago, Illinois, where she works as an artist, a filmmaker, and an illustrator. Tippy and the Night Parade is her first book for children.

As a kid, Lilli always dreamed of having wild animals follow her, but it usually ended up the other way around. Now she likes to take long, wandering walks around the city. No one has ever told her that she sleepwalks, but she often wakes up to find herself in a very messy room, occasionally with a cat on her head.

"Carré’s curvy cartoons brim with quirky humor, and although Tippy is unconscious throughout her adventure, it's evident that she's the sort of girl whose waking life is plenty interesting, too."
--Publishers Weekly

"A dreamy, slightly more visually sophisticated alternative to Peggy Rathmann’s Good Night, Gorilla."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Young readers will delight in all the crazy details."
--The Horn Book Magazine

"'Tippy' uses the paneled art and speech balloons of comics and displays its downtown roots through an offbeat color palette (cantaloupe, chocolate and gunmetal blue), blithe generalization of form and a bed-headed heroine who looks as much the hipster gamin as she does a little girl."
--The New York Times

"An excellent resource for a modern early reader Lilli Carré's Tippy and the Night Parade merges images and words into a fluidly engaging reading experience that gloriously dances from one page to the next."
--Katie's Korner, Diamond Bookshelf

"The images are a smart mix of modern with a vintage flair...Funny and quirky, this parade is one worth marching along with."
--Walking Brain Cells

"Imaginatively evocative book for young ones."
--KidsReads

"Kids with a good imagination will love Tippy, and wish they had as good an excuse for having a messy room."
--ICv2

"This delightful story of a girl being followed home by animals every night in her sleep has Carré's signature color palettes and beautifully pared-back style."
--Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore
"Carré uses dialogue balloons to tell the beguiling tale of a girl who sleepwalks into a midnight-blue dreamscape, leaving her with a mysteriously messy bedroom—and a bird on her head."
-- Family Fun "Favorite Things"
Picture
"Carré’s retro and dreamy illustrations readily lend themselves to visual literacy practices: kids can “ham it up” with sound effects (bumps, scrapes, and animal sounds), and parents and educators can let children guess about the context of the pictures."
–School Library Journal, by Joanna K. Fabicon, Los Angeles Public Library

"One of the loveliest, most poetic and elegantly simple children's books we've ever read."
--Locust Moon

"[Carré] creates a somewhat simple loop-de-looping narrative, a certain segment of which is cut-and-pasted from her imagination onto paper, so that readers see a single cycle of the story but have the opportunity to imagine what came before and what will come afterwards, which will involve a somewhat complicated chain of events to link the various marchers in the titular parade....She draws beautifully simplified animals with a sort of logo-like perfection."
--School Library Journal, Good Comics for Kids

"While you may feel a bit sorry for Tippy's mother at the end of this story, you will find yourself waiting eagerly for more adventures with Tippy and lots more from Lilli Carré!"
--Books4YourKids

"It has the sort of charm and imagination that means I want to grab my God-son and read it to him right now, Carré’s invention in her story and the gorgeous artwork making it a joy to sit and read, to absorb, to luxuriate in."
--Forbidden Planet