SLEEPY PLACES

Hindley asks, as others have, “where do you choose for a nap or a snooze—where is your favorite place to sleep?” There follow, then, several quartets of places for various critters and the question of how one would manage in those same places. It rhymes, sometimes bouncily, but makes for hard going when reading aloud, as it is difficult to track the rhyme scheme. Other problems exist: If a rabbit “sleeps tight in its burrow,” why is the rabbit all stretched out in the picture? “A rose makes a bed for a bee” is a pretty thought, but bees don’t actually sleep in flowers; that’s where they work. Eventually, the choices are more childlike: a box, a hammock, a buggy and, finally, “your own little bed, with your own little blanket and pillow.” The pictures, in lovely soft pencil-and-watercolor hues, are charming; all the animals have the same sleepy faces as the children, even the bats that share their perch. However, the parts lead one to expect more from the whole. (Picture book. 3-5)