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Summary
Summary
Toys, food, and other everyday household objects have wild adventures at night, while the humans in the house sleep, in this imaginative collection of 26 poems.
What do the things in your home do when you're asleep? They play, of course! In this compendium of poems by Laura Purdie Salas, everything from stuffed animals to clothing to writing utensils comes to life under the cover of night. An overdue library book searches for the perfect place to hide. A paper clip skydives with a tissue parachute. A fruit snack unrolls to create a tricky racetrack for toy cars. A hose unwinds and rolls around the yard before curling back up just before dawn. Accompanied by Angela Matteson's beautiful acrylic-on-wood illustrations, this book will spark young readers' imaginations and is a perfect choice for bedtime reading.
Author Notes
Laura Purdie Salas is the author of more than 125 books for children, including If You Were the Moon , the award winning Can Be . . . series, and BookSpeak! Poems About Books , which was an NCTE Notable Book of Poetry and won the Nerdy Book Award for Poetry, among other honors. She lives with her family in Plymouth, Minnesota. Visit her at laurasalas.com.
Angela Matteson is the illustrator of Grumbles from the Town by Jane Yolen and Rebecca Kai Dotlich. She works as a Marketing Director and food packaging designer. She enjoys showing her paintings in galleries and lives in Columbus, Ohio. Visit her at angelamattesonart.com.
Reviews (3)
School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 4-When a little girl drifts off to sleep in her bed, all of her toys come alive to play. From a capless marker to a comb, the toothpaste and the toilet, even items outside her house take advantage of the nighttime experience. Each poem addresses a different item's adventure and the poems range in style: rhyming, free verse, acrostic, two-voice poems, concrete poems, and more. Matteson's whimsical illustrations channel the playful tone of the author's words. The artist utilizes brushstrokes and movement lines to emphasize the playful nature of each character while Salas explores emotions, reactions, and inner thoughts of seemingly everyday items. Children can enjoy this title on their own, but it also can be used to illustrate poetic devices and styles. -VERDICT This title is highly recommended for elementary libraries.-Lia Carruthers, Gill St. Bernard's School, Gladstone, NJ © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Toys and inanimate objects throughout a house come to life as a child slumbers. An overdue library book sneaks from hiding place to hiding place: "I'm not in your backpack./ Or under your bed./ And you HAVE to find me-/ Ms. Teabottom said!" In the kitchen, a basketball cools off in the sink: "I/ pounded/ floor/ My/ head/ is/ sore/ I sleep in ice/ Ahhhhh/ This... feels... nice." Outside the house, the garden hose reshapes itself in the grass: "I'm a hoop. I'm a loop. I unwind and flow./ I'm a serpent skulking in shadowy glow," Matteson fills her scenes with a sense of whooshing movement and rambunctious energy, making for a fun nighttime outing. Ages 4-8. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Short poems describe the adventures of inanimate objects found in a young child's house at night.Initial poems come from the perspective of brightly colored animal toys, stuffed and otherwise, who are ready for a raucous night of play after their human child falls asleep. Art supplies, an errant library book, items of clothing, and even a toilet, among other things, offer their points of view in the pages that follow. Some poems appear on double-page spreads; in other cases two or three poems are featured in the same amount of space accompanied by vignettes. The poems vary in form and impact, but the feel overall is cheery and energetic. Two of the most engaging and recognizable forms, acrostic and concrete, bring the parents' belongings to life: A bottle of fragrance laments her immobile state, and a necktie uses humorous wordplay to describe its function. Matteson's paintings, created in acrylics and gouache with colored pencil, employ multiple shades of blue as background to evoke the nighttime setting. Brighter shades and unusual perspectives match the liveliness of the text. Simply drawn faces on the objects convey emotions effectively, while stick-figure-style arms and legs provide the means of locomotion and heighten the whimsical tone. The child who sleeps through this activity has beige skin and straight, dark hair.Familiar objects, playful language, and imaginative action add up to a collection that will amuse young listeners and, perhaps, inspire them to undertake imaginative explorations of their own. (Picture book/poetry. 3-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
