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Summary
Summary
A stunning lullaby book that will both delight and soothe
All creatures of the world find time to rest. And in this charming lullaby book, countless cozy animals settle down in their beds. Bears lie under their blankets, the fox snuggles beneath a tree in the light of the moon, and the monkey tucks his banana close beside him.
This brilliant pairing of author and illustrator brings us a vibrant yet elegant bedtime book that is sure to enchant young readers as they drift sweetly into their own dreams.
Author Notes
Giovanna Zoboli is an Italian author and editor. She has written several award-winning books for young readers. Giovanna lives in Italy.
Simona Mulazzani is an international children's book illustrator. She has won a number of awards for her work and has illustrated over 60 children's and adult books. She also lives in Italy.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
PreS-This quiet bedtime story told in rhyming couplets reveals a wide range of fish, birds, insects, rodents, and other animals as they sleep. "Hushaby, hushaby, such comfy beds./All of these creatures are resting their heads." With a mix of indoor furniture and outdoor leaves, flowers, and trees, the book imparts a dreamlike state, appropriate to its peaceful topic. Couches, chairs, and even the ground are shown to be suitable places for repose, through images that depict animals of all kinds, from seals settled in treetop beds to a mouse, a mole, and a spider asleep in the cellar to a bird resting in a hammock. The large, ingenuous illustrations, done in paint and collage, have a naive, folklike quality. Bold patterns, including stripes, checks, patchwork, blossoms, and vines, decorate every page while still maintaining a soothing atmosphere. This title exudes tranquility and has the ability to calm a restless child at bedtime.-Maryann H. Owen, Children's Literature Specialist, Mt. Pleasant, WI (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Although a series of paintings showing nothing more than groups of sleeping animals might not sound so remarkable, the excursions of imagination in this book from the team behind I Wish I Had... make it a potential bedtime favorite. Deliciously fanciful scenarios, not zoological correctness, is the name of the game: camels sleep under quilts in bunk beds, while three seals slumber in armchairs balanced on the branches of a tree. Lots of big, threatening animals appear, but any thoughts of scariness are put to rest by the sweetness of their expressions as they slumber: the lion on his white lace pillow, the fox in flowered pajamas, the baboon with hands neatly crossed. If even the crocodile, the snake, and the tiger are sound asleep, the creators seem to imply, nothing can threaten readers on their way to bed. Zoboli's verses contains appealing moments of their own: "Dormouse and badger in beds side by side./ 'I like your pajamas,' friend badger confides." Only one bed is empty-its owner, an owl, stands guard on a tree branch above, staring wide-eyed at the stars. Ages 3-7. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Lush folk art in cozy nighttime colors lends a magical, drowsy atmosphere to this lyrical look at creatures at bedtime. Rhyming couplets are full of rhythm and repetition to soothe the youngest ears and also feature a few surprises to further engage listeners with the images. "Mouse ate her apple and read her nice book. / Who else is sleeping? Just take a good look." Each page turn epitomizes comfort, with appealingly drawn sleeping arrangements both standard issue and captivatingly out of the ordinary: Bird sleeps in a hammock between branches, bunnies sleep on the lawn, hippo sleeps on a sofa, giraffes sleep in sleeping bags, and the seals are asleep in armchairs propped up in the trees. Among all the peaceful sleepers, owl stands guard, a couple of snails creep around -- and why are those baby chicks still up? This large-format ode to the joys of dreamland sets just the right tone for a restful night. julie roach (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
New York Review of Books Review
I DON'T KNOW about yours, but my bedtime reading does not generally - ever, actually - include books about falling asleep. This should seem strange only to young children, for whom the provision of books about sleeping and not sleeping has captured a large slice of the picture book market. Dr. Robert Needlman, who revised and updated Dr. Benjamin Spock's "Baby and Child Care," once told me that the purpose of bedtime stories is to give the imagination a kind of way station between wakefulness and sleep that facilitates an easier slip into unconsciousness. (We were talking about young children, but I think this goes for all of us.) So books for bedtime, sure. But why about? Four new books, swaddled in practically identical shades of sleepy-time blue, attempt to make a case for the genre. Some do a better job than others. "Goodnight Songs" is a collection of verses, most previously unpublished, by Margaret Wise Brown - herself of course the author of the bedtime classic "Goodnight Moon," itself the progenitor of countless imitators eager to become the next baby shower staple. This collection won't be it - where "Goodnight Moon" is all concentrated strangeness and mystery, the poems in "Goodnight Songs" are individually repetitive and carelessly developed sprouts of whimsy. With each of the 12 selections illustrated by a different children's book artist - including Sophie Blackall, Dan Yaccarino, Eric Puybaret and Melissa Sweet - the book lurches more than progresses from spread to spread. According to an editor's note, Brown had conceived these poems as song lyrics, and a compact disc of pallid but grating renditions is duly included in the kind of package that suggests you're getting more for your money than you actually are. From the Italian team of the writer Giovanna Zoboli and the illustrator Simona Mulazzani, and translated by Antony Shugaar, "The Big Book of Slumber" is a humbler and more consistent effort, cataloging in rhyme and picture the sleeping arrangements of an entirely peaceable kingdom. Fancifully so, what with the camels in bunk beds and doves on the chaise longue. The juxtapositions are funny but unfrantic, gentled by the sweet couplets ("Dormouse and badger in beds side by side. / 'I like your pajamas,' friend badger confides") and piquant but restful paintings. The matter-of-factness with which a fox sleeps under a star-strewn baby-blue duvet beneath the purple sky offers both strangeness and comfort. The book lacks shape - you could put the pages in any order and not notice the difference - but does not want for mood. Lilli Carré's "Tippy and the Night Parade" is of a size and style more intended for independent reading than sharing. Toon Books is a grandchild of Raw magazine, the underground comics venue founded in 1980 by the cartoonist Art Spiegelman and his wife, Françoise Mouly, now the art editor of The New Yorker and Toon's publisher and editorial director. While respectably hardcover and didactically appended with suggestions for reading guidance, "Tippy" uses the paneled art and speech balloons of comics and displays its downtown roots through an offbeat color palette (cantaloupe, chocolate and gunmetal blue), blithe generalization of form and a bed-headed heroine who looks as much the hipster gamin as she does a little girl. The narrative, though, is completely old-school children's book: An uncomprehending Tippy is chastised by her mother for the messy state of her bedroom, filled as it is with a peacock, bunny, turtle and various detritus from the natural world. Who will not see that these are but souvenirs of Tippy's somnambulistic wanderlust? She makes another trip the very same night, this time counting among her haul a goat, crab and bear. While the details of Tippy's nighttime walk are mildly funny - and maybe mildly is as funny as you want at bedtime? - there's not really enough going on here to make a child want to go through the story more than once. Maybe the rules are different for comic books (although we certainly reread them with avidity), but any bedtime book worthy of the name needs to work its magic over and over again, like bedtime prayers. The little girl of "Hannah's Night" is also a night wanderer, but her territory is the secure confines of her home, and she's wide awake. As with her previous books, "Emily's Balloon" and "The Snow Day," the Japanese author-illustrator Komako Sakai finds picture-book drama by letting a young child's perceptions - of a new balloon, unexpected weather - play out unfiltered by adult perspective. Hannah finds herself surprised to wake while it's still dark, and at a bit of a loss for what to do, goes off to have a pee (with cat Shiro companionably doing his own business in the litter box next to the toilet). She then raids the fridge (milk for Shiro, cherries for her), looks out at the moon and daringly borrows her big sister's doll right from under her sleeping nose, securing the sister's music box and some art supplies while she's at it. It's a big night. Rather than throwing about some nocturnal nonsense to give Hannah something to do, the book allows the girl's own resourcefulness to provide the story, demonstrating a respect for toddlers and their world matched by the pictures, serious blues and purples warmed by comfortably scratchy lines and anchored by protectively rounded borders. Exciting but safe, Hannah's world is one that would-be dreamers will welcome as a first step into sleep. Whatever it takes. But there's no reason to think kids need to read or hear about bedtime at bedtime any more than you do. If we recognized that children read for the same reasons as adults - the walk into dreamland being among them - the books we intend for their pleasure might look a whole lot different. ROGER SUTTON is editor in chief of The Horn Book Magazine.
