“Goodnight Sounds” by Debbie S. Miller; illustrated by Michelle Jing Chan
“Goodnight Sounds”
By Debbie S. Miller, illustrated by Michelle Jing Chan; Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2024; $18.99.
“On the Wings of Eagles”
By Tami Lehman-Wilzig, illustrated by Alisha Monnin; Apples and Honey Press, 2025; $19.95.
These two large-format, beautifully illustrated books for children could not be more different in their stories, and yet each is uplifting and celebratory in its own way.
“Goodnight Sounds” is written by a longtime Alaskan, about comforting night sounds children might encounter anywhere in the world. “On the Wings of Eagles,” by an Israeli author, recreates for children an inspiring 1949 story involving heroics by Alaska Airlines pilots and crews.
Debbie Miller, the author of “Goodnight Sounds,” has authored many acclaimed nature-related books for both children and adults.
Her new book, dedicated to a granddaughter who was, like her, born in San Francisco, features a young girl who goes to sleep while listening to foghorns. (A sharp eye will find the granddaughter’s name on the bow of a small boat resting beside the seaside home where she sleeps.)
The story, with limited text, then follows various sleepy, smiling children into many different environments — including a suburban house, a city apartment, a camper by a mountain stream, and a tent beneath trees. Each location has its particular sound — crickets, train, splashing water, fluttering leaves. The children are boys and girls, of different ethnicities and looks, in relationships with moms and dads, grandmothers, pets and stuffed animals.
This book, with its colorful art and the sounds spelled out on the pages, should be a pleasure to read with a child, maybe particularly one reluctant to go to sleep. “T-link-tink, t-link-tonk” goes the stream rolling over rocks. “Treeeek-treeeek” call the crickets. There’s an old clock ticking in the hallway, a music box chiming, the purring of a cat, and the snoring of a brother in a top bunk.
“On the Wings of Eagles” by Tami Lehman-Wilzig; illustrated by Alisha Monnin
“On the Wings of Eagles,” ideal for slightly older readers, tells the little-known story of a top-secret rescue mission. In 1949 and 1950, in what was known as both Operation Wings of Eagle and Operation Magic Carpet, thousands of Jews fleeing violence and persecution in Muslim-controlled Yemen were airlifted to safety in the newly created nation of Israel. The Yemenites, known as “the lost tribe of Israel,” were a nomadic people who’d been living in the desert in tents. They had never seen airplanes. They did know that Exodus told of God lifting people to safety on eagles’ wings and accepted that as a prophecy.
Alaska Airlines’ president at the time, James Wooten, chose to commit his company’s DC-4 and C-46 aircraft to the mission as a humanitarian effort. Alaska Airlines eventually make more than 430 flights, carrying 49,000 Jews from Aden to Tel Aviv. Seats were removed from the planes to fit in more passengers, and pilots often flew non-stop, catching rest as they could. Although the flying was by “seat-of-the-pants” and dangers were significant — the planes were shot at and Tel Aviv frequently bombed — there was not a single loss of life.
The book features Haila, a young girl in Yemen being told that her family would leave on the wings of an eagle and being confused by how that would happen. Her family flees through the scorching desert and, after being robbed along the way, arrives in the coastal town of Aden among crowds of refugees. There they meet an Alaskan pilot and an Alaska Airlines plane. The pilot, named Warren, comforts and entertains the children, and his crew paints the plane to resemble an eagle. There’s a bit more adventure before the family lands safely in Israel.
Notes in the back of the book explain the history that inspired the story. The pilot is based on Alaska’s real Warren Metzger, who, with his wife Marian, had also been part of the earlier Berlin Airlift and who went on to become Alaska Airlines’ chief pilot and vice president of flight operations. Haila, the girl, is based on the life of an Israeli woman, Leah Ma’Udah, whose memories of escape from Yemen match those in the fiction.
The true mission was kept secret for years and was only brought to the public in 2013 by the Alaska Jewish Museum in Anchorage. Adults captivated by the story can read more about it in two books — “On Eagles’ Wings” by Capt. Elgen M. Long, published in 2016, and “Alaska Over Israel” by Darragh Metzger, published in 2018. Author Long, who died in 2022, was the last member of the Alaska Airlines crew to participate, and Metzger is the daughter of Warren and Marian Metzger.
In these troubled times, it’s surely a good thing for children and adults alike to read and think about what keeps us and our neighbors around the world safe. These two children’s books are excellent ones for beginning family and friend conversations.
[How a dashed dream in Anchorage helped inspire ESPN journalist Seth Wickersham’s 2nd book]
[Book review: The 1970 all-women Denali climb is given its dramatic due]