While The World Is Sleeping
PreSchool-K—A huge, round-headed, furry-footed snowy owl peers into a young girl's window and invites her on a nighttime ride. ("Oh, what wondrous things we'll see/While the world is sleeping.") That line completes the lilting rhyme on each page, adding a lulling, comforting tone to the poetic text. Off the child and the owl fly, over frolicking fawns, swimming fish, playing rabbits, dam-building beavers, and other denizens of the night, returning home, at last, to sleep. The final painting shows the child stretching awake in her bed at sunrise. Kirk's bold gouache paintings fill every inch of each scene with eye-catching realistic detail, highlighted by the light of the full Moon. Many of the animals, especially the cat-faced fox; the sweet-faced porcupine clinging in childlike fashion to a tree branch; and the rounded, soft-furred, innocent-faced raccoon have a friendly, nonthreatening look about them. There is strong detail in leaves and shrubbery, pinecones, tree bark, animal fur, owl feathers, and porcupine quills. A reassuring bedtime poem, as well as a lovely introduction to nocturnal animals.—Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OHCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.