SHHH...GOOD NIGHT

Parent and baby animals get ready to snuggle down at bedtime in the forest.

Each double-page spread contains a poem on the verso and images of various creatures settling down for the night on the recto. A mother bird quiets her fledgling; a squirrel hugs their baby; parent and baby fireflies doze on a leaf; and a deer and fawn snuggle together. Elaborate die cuts in flower, leaf, and tree shapes offer glimpses of the subsequent spreads and keep the first verse of each poem in view when the page containing the second verse is turned. The final spread shows a variety of parent and baby animals bedding down for the night. The collage-effect, jewel-toned illustrations are attractive and pleasingly designed, although the anthropomorphized creatures have a cartoonish look. The die cuts are complex but don’t add much to the reading experience. The simple, soothing, but sometimes awkwardly constructed rhymes are suitable for bedtime but sometimes confusing; readers are exhorted to “Watch sunny skies turn gray,” but the skies are resolutely pink in the illustration. A curious child might wonder why fireflies go to sleep if they’re shining at night? The complexity of the production fails to disguise otherwise simplistic and unoriginal content.

This lackluster effort does not add much to an already-stuffed genre of bedtime books.