A visual bedtime treat.
Fairy-tale and nursery-rhyme characters help young children go to sleep in this beautiful bedtime book.
In simple rhyming verse Arena bids good night to a host of well-known characters: “Sleep tight, / Snow White. / Seven dwarves / say good night”; “Rest your head, / Little Red. / Forget the Wolf. / It’s time for bed.” Some of the rhymes have a slight tongue-in-cheek bent, as in: “Don’t rough it, / Little Miss Muffet. / Fluff a pillow— / chuck the tuffet!” And one rhyme may raise the eyebrows of feminist readers: “Want a fella, / Cinderella? / Eight hours’ sleep / will make you bella.” In all, 15 different characters make an appearance; most are female except for Prince Charming, Little Boy Blue, who make solo appearances, and Hansel, Jack, and Beast, who appear with Gretel, Jill, and Beauty, respectively. Each character or character duo is given a full two-page spread, illustrated in a gloriously exuberant style with an equally vibrant palette by Alvarez. The characters each sport different hair and skin colors in a range of hues. If little ones are not yet familiar with the fairy tales and nursery rhymes alluded to, use this as an excuse to introduce them to what could be called a cultural common language. Pair this with Janet and Allan Ahlberg’s classic Each Peach Pear Plum (1978) for a multiracial update.
A visual bedtime treat. (Picture book/poetry. 3-6)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-93713-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
A bright grab bag.
Having put her own spin on traditional nursery rhymes in My Very First Mother Goose (1986) and Here Comes Mother Goose (1999), both edited by Iona Opie, Wells now interprets some of Milne’s children’s verse.
Where the original title had 44 poems, some confined to a page and others extending to a handful, with Ernest Shepard’s illustrations acting mostly as decoration, Wells here presents 13, many sprawling over several pages and accompanied by bright, busy illustrations that turn each one into a narrative. When James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree’s mother goes “down to the edge of the town” without him in “Disobedience,” she hops into a black London cab driven by a rabbit, stops to make a call from a red phone box, and comes home in a different cab (driven by a cat) with a white terrier puppy for her son. Meanwhile, wee James telephones some nine people, including the royal family, with Wells’ interpolated dialogue presented in speech balloons. There’s so much side business the propulsive silliness of the original rhyme gets lost. Shorter poems, such as “Independence” and “Happiness” (both of which involve independent-thinking cat children), fare better, and sequential illustrations for “The King’s Breakfast” work well to convey the many back-and-forths endured by the Dairymaid. Most humans present White, though there are characters of color (including, a bit oddly, Christopher Robin).
A bright grab bag. (glossary) (Poetry. 3-5)Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-324-01653-3
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Light doses of natural history, but better written and more somniferous bedtime reads abound.
Animals from lions and elephants to crocodiles and anacondas bed down.
Actually, when it comes to the anaconda, “no one really knows if it actually does sleep.” But that’s not the only poetic license the father-and-son co-authors take as they record in stumbling metrics (“An ostrich is a bird that’s incredibly tall. / Its eggs can be bigger than a softball”) and a notably loose rhyme scheme not only where, but how various animals larger than those in Steven J. Simmons’ Where Do Creatures Sleep at Night? (2021), illustrated by Harper, first spend their days and then enjoy their downtime. The connection between text and images isn’t all that firm either, as the silverback gorilla gets male pronouns and the pride of lions collective ones, but all the rest of the animals are nongendered as its even though they appear to be mothers, since Harper depicts them alone with offspring in cozy proximity. An opening spread of toy animals held by variously toned hands hints at unsurprising closing scenes of human children, including a brown-skinned child, taking the final couplet to heart: “Then at night after you’re fed, / you snuggle up in your own sweet bed!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Light doses of natural history, but better written and more somniferous bedtime reads abound. (Informational picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-62354-143-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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