IN MY DREAMS

“Every night, dreams lull me to sleep. / I try to stay awake to see where they come from, / but I always drift off….”

A nameless, light-skinned child with long dark hair takes readers on a tour of their dreams in this translation from Dutch. Much like in a dream, there is no continuous plot or narrative, but Lada’s gentle prose floats between reveries about beautiful clothes, the sea, and a rainy evening, all depicted with naïve illustrations that appear to be rendered in pencil. Forest animals in human clothes, friendly fish, and smiling children, most of whom have skin the white of the page, all welcome readers to the maze of dreamland in hazy shades of gray with a few pops of color. We see the narrator floating above the world on a feather and wandering through a garden. When the narrator winds their way back to the waking world, the visuals switch to full-color images with a watercolorlike look. The child now appears rested and confident: “I look the world in the eye / and…I am myself.” Ephemeral imagery and a sleepy pace will surely bring only good dreams to tired young readers. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A welcoming wind down.