LIGHTHOUSE LULLABY

Safety and serenity radiate from the pages of this gently soporific bedtime rhyme. With the moon riding high overhead, a child accompanies his father out into the snowy fields to gather up the livestock. Then father climbs to the top of the lighthouse tower to keep watch, and the child nestles into bed: “Scents of Mama’s just-baked rolls / Are drifting up the open stair. / Underneath her handstitched quilt, / Tired arms embrace a teddy bear.” The surfaces of Briggs’s pointillist pictures look finely sponged, softening colors and lines while spreading each scene with a clear, mild light. The Boon Island Light off Cape Neddick, Maine, served as the model for house and grounds, but the comfortable evening ritual, and the warm feelings around it, will be understood even by children far from the sea. Old-fashioned sweetness. (Picture book. 4-6)