How Does Sleep Come?

August 6, 2012
The starry cover and its curly, romantic lettering shout “bedtime book,” and the sentimental writing from first-time author Blackmore (granddaughter of children’s book creator Roger Duvoisin) has a familiar sound, too: “Sleep comes quietly. Like a snowfall that blankets a meadow on a dark starry night and lays down a soft white canvas for rabbits to leave footprints.” But it’s a distinctive piece of work; Blackmore has carefully polished her prose’s rolling, soothing rhythm, beginning with adverbs that describe how sleep comes and finishing by knitting them into one long, hypnotic final sentence: “And quietly, silently, softly, peacefully, gently, Jacob fell asleep.” Sayles (Moon Child) imagines night as a star-spangled curtain that parts to reveal Jacob’s living room, then as a midnight blue cape Jacob wears as he sails a boat across a luminous full moon. Blackmore doesn’t try to jolly children to sleep or search for a new bedtime angle; instead, she assembles the softest, most comforting elements she can find, while Sayles provides spread after spread of safe, cozy pictures. If that’s not a recipe for sweet dreams, what is? Ages 4–up.

September 1, 2012
A sleepy-bye story that doesn't work on any number of levels, despite Jacob's starry blanket and sweet-faced mama. If this is meant to be read to a child going to sleep, the sheer number of words strung together without pauses or commas might make one breathless. Jacob asks the question of the title, and his mama answers, "Sleep comes quietly. Like a snowfall that blankets a meadow on a dark starry night and lays down a soft white canvas for rabbits to leave footprints." Each one of these overly descriptive sentences is followed by a single line about Jacob snuggling under his covers, yawning or curling up. Readers proceed from the rabbit in the snow to fog in the harbor, summer clouds to a kitten by the fireplace to a butterfly. The rapid change of seasons might signal a universal nighttime, but it is confounded by Jacob's dream, in which cloud, snow, butterfly and cat come together in the deep blue sky. The pictures are soft, gentle and peaceful, just as the text describes sleep, with their primary hue a blue richly evocative of a country sky. They cannot mitigate the breathless delivery of the text, however. Any number of sleepy bedtime tales are sleepier and bedtimier than this. (Picture book. 4-7)

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November 1, 2012

PreS-K-This lullaby focuses on imagery rather than the sounds of the words that lull children to sleep. Jacob asks his mother how sleep comes and, as she tucks the youngster in, she tells him that it comes silently, softly, peacefully, and gently and offers a description for each one. Unfortunately, the images are fairly esoteric for a young child to understand. For example, she says: "Sleep comes silently. Like a fog that rolls into a harbor and shrouds the boats in misty gray, making a silence broken only by the clang of buoys." The description is wonderfully poetic but the connection between this scene and sleep will be lost on the intended audience. The illustrations are soft and appealing, and the artist's use of smaller frames for Jacob as sleep begins to take him is well chosen. Titles such as Sherri Duskey Rinker's Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site (Chronicle, 2011), Mem Fox's Time for Bed (Harcourt, 1993), Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon (HarperCollins, 1947), and Bob Shea's Dinosaur vs. Bedtime (Hyperion, 2008) are more accessible choices for young children.-Joan Kindig, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2012
Preschool-G Though too short to put down any younglings who aren't already semiconscious, this free-verse bedtime poem offers a tranquilizing string of parental similes in response to the titular question from a snuggled-up child: Sleep comes quietly. / Like a snowfall that blankets a / meadow on a dark starry night, murmurs young Jacob's mother. Similarly, sleep comes silently like fog, softly like a cloud, peacefully, and gently as a butterfly's landing. Alternating natural landscapes with views of the child drowsing off, Sayles surrounds her slightly hazy figures with starry, deep-blue skies, blankets, and curtainsfinishing off with a small-face-only close-up of the sleeper floating amid stars on a white page. Properly, if briefly, soporific, and a natural companion to Mary McKenna Siddals' Morning Song (2001), also illustrated by Sayles.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)