SLEEP, LITTLE DOZER

A little bulldozer worries that he won’t be able to go to sleep without Mama, but Papa performs the bedtime routine admirably.

Small yellow Dozer protests when blue-green, mustachioed Papa announces that it’s time for bed. “But Mama’s not here!” “She still isn’t back / from her work at the pier.” Nevertheless, Papa gives Dozer a bath and reads him a bedtime story (The 3 Little Rigs). When sleep proves elusive—even after Dozer tries counting jeeps—Papa sings Mama’s bedtime song. A fluffy, cloudlike border appears around the scenes of mixers (“weary from spinning their drums”), garbage trucks, tankers, and trenches, all snoozing away. When Papa forgets the ending, Dozer reminds him how it goes. Dozer drifts off to Dreamland and is fast asleep by the time Mama, a red forklift, comes in to kiss him good night. Murray’s flawless rhyme and Hilsaca’s gentle colors, rounded shapes, and adorable, kawaii-flavored dozers are a delight. The tale has the charm of Kate Dopirak’s Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Car (2018), illustrated by Mary Peterson, without the pressure to sing the whole book—and with the bonus of showing a loving, competent father at bedtime while Mama is at work.

A dream of a bedtime book.