Nocturne
Kindergarten-Grade 3.  Yolen's short ode to evening touches upon the moon and fireflies, moths, an owl, and small nocturnal animals. Double-page paintings of a nighttime countryside feature flat figures of a boy, his mother, and their dog outside their lighted house. Hunter's simple scenes are nicely textured with cross hatching, and her homely animal portraits?a bat in flight, a squirrel asleep in a tree hole, a raccoon, an owl, and a sleeping dog?are appealing. The simple scheme of winding down the day ends first in the boy's bedroom?"Tucked up under eiderdown/I nestle down, wrestle down/my hullaballooning thoughts/and drift through dark into dreams." The concluding dreamscape places the boy's bed back in the outdoors amid the grasses, fireflies, and night sky. The pictures illuminate the poem and make it more concrete for younger children, adding setting and a cast of characters to tell their own small story. An appealing addition to the shelves of bedtime books.?Margaret Bush, Simmons College, BostonCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.