A delightful bedtime book that encourages both imaginative play and restorative rest.
A nocturnal companion to Matheson’s Tap the Magic Tree (2013), this interactive picture book illuminates nighttime's wonders while shepherding readers toward sleep.
Dusk falls in waves of pink, blue and purple watercolor; lightning bugs glow, stars twinkle and fall, deer skedaddle, constellations shine—all with the touch of young readers’ fingers. Rhymes offer clear instructions: “Now let’s blow a quiet breeze. // Pat the deer / and say goodnight, please.” An implicit sense of power (and even a hint of magic) follows each page turn, imbuing these soft, simple collages with a quavering excitement. With a whisper, the moon appears in the (now) very dark sky—a signal that it’s getting to be time for owls to go to bed and probably past time for little readers. A soothing, somnolent narrative voice nudges, “Close your eyes and breathe in deeply. / Nod your head if you feel sleepy.” Caregivers will surely appreciate the suggestion, as well as the gentle lesson in preparing for and accepting sleep. More learning lies on the final page, which delivers a glossary that offers rich information about the nighttime occurrences, animals and plants featured earlier.
A delightful bedtime book that encourages both imaginative play and restorative rest. (Picture book. 2-6)Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-227447-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender...
A polar-bear parent speaks poetically of love for a child.
A genderless adult and cub travel through the landscapes of an arctic year. Each of the softly rendered double-page paintings has a very different feel and color palette as the pair go through the seasons, walking through wintry ice and snow and green summer meadows, cavorting in the blue ocean, watching whales, and playing beside musk oxen. The rhymes of the four-line stanzas are not forced, as is the case too often in picture books of this type: “When cold, winter winds / blow the leaves far and wide, / You’ll cross the great icebergs / with me by your side.” On a dark, snowy night, the loving parent says: “But for now, cuddle close / while the stars softly shine. // I’ll always be yours, / and you’ll always be mine.” As the last illustration shows the pair curled up for sleep, young listeners will be lulled to sweet dreams by the calm tenor of the pictures and the words. While far from original, this timeless theme is always in demand, and the combination of delightful illustrations and poetry that scans well make this a good choice for early-childhood classrooms, public libraries, and one-on-one home read-alouds.
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender restrictions. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68010-070-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Like its subject: full of bustling life yet peaceful.
Life buzzes in a community garden.
Surrounded by apartment buildings, this city garden gets plenty of human attention, but the book’s stars are the plants and insects. The opening spread shows a black child in a striped shirt sitting in a top-story window; the nearby trees and garden below reveal the beginnings of greenery that signal springtime. From that high-up view, the garden looks quiet—but it’s not. “Sleepy slugs / and garden snails / leave behind their silver trails. / Frantic teams of busy ants / scramble up the stems of plants”; and “In the earth / a single seed / sits beside a millipede. / Worms and termites / dig and toil / moving through the garden soil.” Sicuro zooms in too, showing a robin taller than a half-page; later, close-ups foreground flowers, leaves, and bugs while people (children and adults, a multiracial group) are crucial but secondary, sometimes visible only as feet. Watercolor illustrations with ink and charcoal highlights create a soft, warm, horticulturally damp environment. Scale and perspective are more stylized than literal. McCanna’s superb scansion never misses, incorporating lists of insects and plants (“Lacewings, gnats, / mosquitos, spiders, / dragonflies, and water striders / live among the cattail reeds, / lily pads, and waterweeds”) with description (“Sunlight warms the morning air. / Dewdrops shimmer / here and there”). Readers see more than gardeners do, such as rabbits stealing carrots and lettuce from garden boxes.
Like its subject: full of bustling life yet peaceful. (author’s note) (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-1797-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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