HUSH, LITTLE ONES
by John Butler & illustrated by John Butler
Never has the power of suggestion been more irresistible, as Butler (Whose Baby Am I?, 2001, etc.) offers a series of drowsy animal parents and their young nestling down together for the night. Paired to one large-type couplet each—“Hush, little penguin, go to sleep, / nestled between your fathers feet”—the snoozers are rendered in astonishingly lifelike close-ups, on oversized, double-paged full-bleed spreads, every downy feather or tuft of fur, every bright eye carefully limned. Butler intensifies the coziness of it all even further by giving every joey, colt, chick, cub, and pup a subtle smile; children will be smiling too as they drift off to dreamland on the wings of this sonorous beddy-bye rhyme. (Picture book. 3-5)