Family fun the old-fashioned way

“It started out as a normal summer night” begins John Rocco’s latest picture book. The city is loud and hot, and a family is predictably busy – dad cooks dinner, the sister talks on the phone, mom taps away at the computer, and the lonely brother plays video games – until the lights go out. Without power, nothing is normal, and the family reconnects, eventually discovering parties on the roof and in the streets as neighbors escape their hot apartments. When the lights do come back on, the family is not quite ready for normalcy, and they turn them off and play a board game. Told through sparse text in a comic book format with vibrant pictures and speech bubbles, this delightful story reminds the reader of the fun that can be had when the electricity goes out.