OUR NEST

Luminous undertones in McElmurry’s neatly brushed landscapes and cozy close-ups reflect and enhance the lyricism of Lindbergh’s rhyme. Cataloguing nests, the poet begins with a reader or listener snuggled in bed and a dog nestled nearby, then moves ever outward, from a mama cat on a pile of clothes and a hen out in the barn, to the ocean nested upon our planet, which is in turn nesting in the universe, and back, step by step, to a heartfelt finish: “We’re here in the nest of creation / With the earth and the stars up above. / And you’re here, safe and warm, / In the nest of my arms, / When I wrap them around you with love.” Bedtime reads lie thick upon the ground, but for its comforting message, flowing text, warm sentiment, and jewel-like art, this comes close to such standards as Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon or Kate Banks’s And If the Moon Could Talk (1998). (Picture book. 5-8)