- Shopping Bag ( 0 items )
Children's LiteratureThere is something appealing about the unfettered anthropomorphism of books for the very youngest readers and listeners. Here is a hillside full of young ones—chick, hare, toad, deer, and the wild child in the house—each resisting bedtime in its own baby animal way. Each sequence follows a comfortable, predictable pattern, setting the scene, pushing the child's wild energy to the foreground, then enfolding reader and listener in a gentle mother-and-child resolution. A rhyming couplet (e.g., "Sweet clover/scoot over!") follows two anapestic verses in each baby animal vignette. The animals' bedtime romps faithfully echo scenes familiar to homes with young children. Bedtime stragglers will find both comfort and playfulness in these pages. Margie Moore's soft paintings evoke a traditional nursery rhyme mood, as well as seeming to pay homage to other bunnies and deer immortalized in children's literature. The child's wildness seems a trifle more contained in the illustration than the words appear to suggest. In the final scene, the stuffed toys on the child's pillow bring the narrative to an interesting, visual, unifying point. 2006, Dutton, Ages 4 to 8.