Keeping the Night Watch is a children's poetry book written by Hope Anita Smith and illustrated by E. B.

[1] Published by Henry Holt and Company as the sequel to Smith's The Way a Door Closes, it was a Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book and appeared on several best children's book lists in 2009.

Washington III, the narrator from Smith's 2003 poetry book The Way a Door Closes.

[3] While the prequel captures the experiences and emotions of a family abandoned by their father, Keeping the Night Watch explores C.J.

's subsequent struggles with the unexpected return of his father and expands on intersecting issues of adolescence, poverty, and urban life.