Shhh!

August 1, 2011
With a refreshing take on sibling relationships, Gorbachev (What's the Big Idea, Molly?) celebrates not only a child's imagination but also his love and protective older brother mentality. "When my baby brother sleeps, I am very quiet," announces the book's hero, shown wearing a cowboy hat and tiptoeing past his brother's room. "Please stop laughing," he says to a clown, seen juggling beach balls in a circus ring, before the boy proceeds to bravely shush warring knights, a tiger, and even a train. Using engaging paintings and minimal text, Gorbachev sensitively zeroes in on the brother's emotions, especially when the baby wakes up, and both their smiles are full of joy. The remainder of the book includes the same characters seen before, revealed to be toys that the boy enthusiasticallyâand loudlyâplays with ("And I am jumping and shouting and singing again!"). The toys are not generic plastic, but old-fashioned, well-loved playthings, so the images move easily between the book's make-believe and realistic scenes. Gorbachev's tenderhearted message is clear: good things come to those who wait for naptime to be over. Ages 3â5.

August 1, 2011

Gorbachev charms in this salute to naptime.

"When my baby brother sleeps, I am very quiet." But the young narrator also does his brotherly best to quiet other noisemakers. There is that clown whooping it up and the knights fighting and the plane buzzing and the train clanking and the pirates firing their cannons. "Shhh!" says the boy to each. But when baby brother wakes—drawn here by Gorbachev with a wonderful, round head and gaping maw, much in tune with the knight's potato nose, the pirates' bristly cheeks and the conductor's walrus of a mustache—all the various characters can get back to business, only this time as the young boy's toys. Gorbachev recreates the powerfully evocative atmosphere around naptime—the sepulchral hush, the strange amplification of the most minor sounds; readers can almost taste the afternoon's doldrums. His drawings are both delicate and taut: The lines are fine, and the colors are like a blush, while the various characters have been caught in mid-act, now frozen but ready to move when the word is given.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 1, 2011

PreS-Gr 1-The boy narrating this picture book politely asks each of his playmates to stop their noisy activities while his baby brother is sleeping. The clown, knights, tiger, pilot, train conductor, and pirates then become so quiet that the child can hear a fly. But when the baby wakes up, he can make as much noise as he wants-until it is time to settle down again. In the first half of the book, Gorbachev draws the boy in realistic proportion to the characters and their respective surroundings as he shushes them. But when the baby is awake, readers see that the youngster is playing with his toys and that their previous life-size appearance was in his imagination. The illustrations, done in watercolors, gouache, and ink, are cheerfully rendered in soft tones that capture the calm, then playful, actions in the story. This is a fine book about how a child should behave while a younger sibling is asleep.-Martha Simpson, Stratford Library Association, CT

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.