MY BED

Children around the globe go to sleep in different kinds of beds in this ingeniously illustrated picture book.

Fashioned from fabric, beads, wire, and yarn and using embroidery stitches as adornment, the compositions have some depth and use deep colors. All readers will want to return to pore over the details of these imaginative depictions. Each scene features one or two children in their sleeping places: hammocks in Brazil, a courtyard in Iran, a rooftop in Morocco, alcove beds “nestled into walls” in Norway, or mattresses “outside in the fresh air” in Ghana. As befits its international theme, the children and the occasional adult in the pictures are diverse. Each double-page spread includes a fabric-relief picture that fills two-thirds of the spread, and on the left, one half of a rhyming couplet that gives an overview followed by a short description of the scene and its country. An appropriate fabric animal appears: an elephant for India, a rooster for Russia, a koi for Japan. The animals appear on the endpapers, creating a guessing game, and they also show up in the last scene, of a child snoozing in a presumably North American home. Only a map is missing for a complete learning experience. A concluding note about the creation of the illustrations will be fascinating to adults and may prompt them to work with children to make some fabric collages.

Read this before bedtime to ensure a world of sweet dreams.