THE WEAVER

Where do dreams come from? In this picture book, the weaver (a young girl seated on a cloud and accompanied by an unmentioned gray cat) creates dreams on her loom in the sky with thread spun “from trails of shooting stars, / white clouds, / and spiderwebs hung with dew” and dyed with colors of the morning gleaned from the sky, grass, fields and water. Throughout the day, she weaves a tapestry of memories held and emotions felt by people all over the world, and then she dances around the nighttime world with her completed cloth, letting it “[drift] down / to the earth below— / a coat to warm us / and protect us, / a coat to fill us with joy.” Kleven’s soft, painterly illustrations depict a multicultural cast of characters going about their days and dream-filled nights in different parts of the world, and the weaver returns home to her own family in the sky at book’s end, providing a satisfying conclusion to the gentle, lyrical bedtime story. (Picture book. 3-7)