MORNING, NOON, AND NIGHT

As the earth turns from day to night, George (Julie’s Wolf Pack, 1997, etc.) honors creatures of the American landscape. From sunrise to sundown, flies bite, birds alight, bison laze, elk graze, bats careen, and magpies preen, as they make their way through the course of a day. From Maine to California and everywhere in between, animals welcome morning, noon, evening, and night. The Eastern Piedmont cardinal’s “Cheer, cheer” ushers in sunrise; at high noon, antelopes doze and ground squirrels burrow in Arizona; the Pacific Coast owlet sings, “Who, the night, who, who” at the close of day. With repetitive strains of poetry that mimic the rhythm of a day, George says, “the earth keeps on turning, on turning, on turning.” Precise horizontal paintings provide a mural of the country; while not all animals mentioned in the text are depicted, brief endnotes identify creatures and general locales by page number. (Picture book. 5-8)