THE FATHERS ARE COMING HOME

The author of Goodnight Moon has, justifiably, been apotheosized into the pantheon of children’s literature’s greats. But the seemingly inexhaustible writer left behind a huge quantity of unpublished material—and the sad truth is that not everything she wrote meets her high standards, and this is one example. Spread by spread, animal fathers make their way home to their little ones, concluding with a sailor coming home to his little boy. With the exception of the lion father, “who lives alone, so he comes home to himself,” there is little of Brown’s signature understated wit or musicality. Savage’s illustrations—glowing, blocky linocuts, which evoke in line, shape and color the classic work of Esphyr Slobodkina—do their best, but they cannot lift this barely middling text to greatness. (Picture book. 2-5)