SUNFLOWERS RISE IN A MIDNIGHT SKY

Davis leads readers on an odyssey through a fantasy dreamland in this children’s picture book.

“What if when night falls, dreams come true?” A combination of gorgeous artwork and narrative whimsy, this “what if” story is an invitation to imagine a sleepy-time world where purple cows eat purple grass, “airplanes land on marshmallow clouds,” Saturn’s rings fall in rainbow loops, and sidewalk squares tumble like dominos. It’s a place where mermaids, laughing hyenas, and spiders made of diamonds play, and an enormous lollipop disappears “in a billion licks.” The book features a series of vignettes with brief text serving as a design element in the exuberant, full-color illustrations by Wei, curving around images or set as short vertical, horizontal, or diagonal lines. The pattern of the author’s word pictures isn’t consistent, some expressed in rhyme and some in free verse, but the inventive theater-of-the-mind imagery is alternately soulful, humorous, and intriguing (“Words on signs rearrange to tell secrets”). The full-page watercolor, acrylic, and paper-and-fabric collage illustrations are rich with details to explore: A window curtain pulls back, revealing a night sky swirling with moths, stars, comets, seed pods, flowers, and a tiny black cat poised beside a miniature rainbow; and a graceful deer bends to drink from a river, belly glowing with “swallowed fireflies.”

Eye filling and eclectic, this is an imagination-stirring bedtime treat for young children.