Night Shift: An insight into depression (Hardback)

‘I cannot recommend this beautiful picture book about depression by Debi Gliori highly enough. It’s a masterpiece.’ – David Walliams, bestselling children’s author

SHORTLISTED for the 2018 KATE GREENAWAY MEDAL

A UK nomination for IBBY’s List of Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities 2019

A groundbreaking picture book on depression with stunning illustrations.

With stunning black and white illustration and deceptively simple text, author and illustrator Debi Gliori examines how depression affects one’s whole outlook upon life, and shows that there can be an escape – it may not be easy to find, but it is there. Drawn from Debi’s own experiences and with a moving testimony at the end of the book explaining how depression has affected her and how she continues to cope, Debi hopes that by sharing her own experience she can help others who suffer from depression, and to find that subtle shift that will show the way out.

‘I have used dragons to represent depression. This is partly because of their legendary ability to turn a once fertile realm into a blackened, smoking ruin and partly because popular mythology shows them as monstrous opponents with a tendency to pick fights with smaller creatures. I’m not particularly brave or resourceful, and after so many years battling my beasts, I have to admit to a certain weariness, but I will arm-wrestle dragons for eternity if it means that I can help anyone going through a similar struggle.’

‘Debi Gliori is amazing. Her pictures offer people an insight into depression that words often struggle to reach. She makes visible the invisible. And I for one want to thank her for that.’ – Matt Haig, bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive

Review

I’m not sure how to review Night Shift without making it personal. Stories that focus on depression are, much like depression themselves, deeply personal. I can’t read this book, look at the illustrations, without making comparisons to my own experiences. So sometimes I will think “yes this is me” and other times “no I don’t feel like that”. Depression is unique to the individual and while traits can be shared or similar for many I don’t think it’s possible for one story to ever be universal. This might come across as negative but it really isn’t. Debi Gliori’s has written and drawn a beautiful and dark map. It is because of the illustrations (which I think have a bigger impact because they aren’t tied down by words) that this book connects so much. Night Shift is very effective and for a book so contained it’s powerful. Source: Luna’s Little Library

In only a few pages, with beautiful black and white drawings, Gliori brings home the misery of her existence in the grip of depression. Much like Haig’s book, it helps convey how it feels to be depressed. The unrelenting nature of it, the desperate feeling that nothing matters. The book has a hopeful, forward-looking ending. It’s perfect to give to somebody when you can’t put into words how you are feeling. Source: Geek Dad

I thought this was a beautiful, brave and poetic book. With exquisite brevity, Debi Gliori articulates the struggle of living with depression, in stunning black and white illustrations, punctuated by a single burst of the dragon of depression’s fire. Books like this are immensely important, so that the many children, teenagers and adults going through similar night journeys through the fog of illness, can feel that they are not alone in their struggles. The spread where ‘something shifted’ and the depression lifts, is moving beyond words. Source: Cressida Cowell

Gliori’s words and illustrations capture something that ‘there is no language for’ and include a reminder that there might not be a knight in shining armour but at some point, there will be a shift. So creatively diverse and clever books like Night Shift are a great way of communicating the effects of depression through metaphor. Source: Sarah’s Chapter

A hugely personal book draw