Orion and the Dark by Emma Yarlett (2015, Templar Books) is a book that is all about facing your fears and having fun along the way.  Orion is a young boy, who like many petites is afraid of quite a few things: wasps, dogs, monsters, spiders, girls and one thing that scares Orion more than anything else…the dark.  Because he is so frightened of the dark, he has tried everything to solve the problem, but nothing works.

His room that isn’t scary during the day becomes frightening at night.  One night Orion notices something very peculiar happening, the Dark begins to come alive and then straight into Orions’ room.  The Dark is a beautiful slightly transparent figure adorned with stars and constellations.

Orion remembers what his mother always says “remembers your manners” so he introduces himself and what do you know, the Dark – not so scary after all.

Orion goes through a fantastic transformation, he realizes that the Dark is not exactly what he expected.  The adventure that Orion and Dark go on is to uncover all the scary places and see what they are really about.  What Orion learns through facing his fears is that some of the places that he thought where the most frightening, turned out to be really FUN!

Together Orion and the Dark explore the darkness and all of the things that had previously scared Orion and together they conquered his fears.  Until they got to the scariest of them all the night sky.

What Orion realizes through this journey with the Dark is that they are friends and that he doesn’t want the Dark to go far away.

This book is perfect for petites who love a great story and maybe aren’t too fond of the dark.  After we read this book, I looked for some really fun activities that we could do to keep the fun going and talk more about the stars.  A special thank you to Templar Books an imprint of Candlewick for the images.

 

Since the girls so enjoyed reading Orion and the Dark I wanted to make sure that we continued to have fun discussing this topic.  I found this gorgeously done constellation book that is the perfect companion activity to this book from Quince & Quire.

Here is an amazing printable document of the Northern Hemisphere constellations courtesy of Mr. Printables, that might help you to complete your constellation book.

 

Hope you enjoyed our fun activity, if you like what you read here consider following The Petite Stag on Facebook or Instagram.

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