TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE CAR

An automobile stand-in for the young and the restless rejects the siren song of bedtime.

This book may offer the chance to sing it in its entirety to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” but readers should think hard before committing to it. To that most familiar of tunes, a spunky red car leaves its garage at bedtime to zip and zoom past various fellow vehicles at night. They all—tractors and diggers, planes and fire trucks—get a chipper nighttime salute from the zippy vehicle. After an evening of high energy, at last the auto is ferried back to its cozy home, ready to let the “beep-beep dreams begin.” Simply reading the book is just as effective as (if not more so than) singing it, and it has the lilting cadences common to bedtime fare. There’s even a bit of levity, as when a number of vehicles respond to the little car with their signature sounds. There is an old car (“Ah-OOH-ga!”), an ice cream truck (“Zing!”), a truck (“HONK!”), and an improbably rude-sounding school bus (“BLARG!”). Artistically, the soothing hand-printed linoleum blocks, digitally collaged in shades of brown, red, blue, and yellow, lend the proceedings a calming atmosphere.

Bedroom garages outfitted with this little auto are sure to be sites of requests for repeated readings.