BEDTIME!

The setting of this bedtime tale is a clutter-free child's bedroom, where a boy refuses to go to bed but soon admits to his grandmother that one of his three stuffed toys might be sleepy. The narrator asks, ``So do you know what that grandma did? She took that sleepy bear and she put him into the bed.'' One by one the boy releases the toys to the grandmother's custody, until they are all in bed without him. She begins reading a story ``with no one sitting on her lap.'' Savvy children will predict this outcome: The boy finally retires and falls asleep. Everything in the room is soft-edged, portrayed in blocky shapes and lulling tones of blue and green, except for an alarm clock, whose details of numbers and hands are clear. The pictures are soothing but repetitious; only the conspiratorial tone between the narrator and readers distinguishes this entry from much of the bedtime-story canon. (Picture book. 1-3)