How Does Sleep Come?
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 curtains—finishing 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. Preschool-Grade 2. --John Peters