I love the pairing here. Both author and illustrator are among my favorites. It was a nice song, not the kind that'll go top 40 anytime soon, but that is really not the point here. I'd read this to a child as they were going to sleep. Nicely done. ( )

When I opened this book the first time, my initial reaction was that the illustrations, done in watercolor and gouache, were a little odd and I wasn't sure I liked them. I think that painting realistic people is always tough, but as I grew used to the style, I began to appreciate illustrator Peter Catalanotto's choices more and more. The text is minimal and sets the mood more than tells a story, so it's the illustrations that carry the brief bedtime routine plot. On the top portion of each page is the bedtime ritual of a toddler girl with her parents, in a color palette dominated by glowing yellows, browns and reds. On the bottom portion of each page, Lyon uses blue and purple colors to depict sleepy animals that match some of the images in the text. In the last four spreads, the bottom portion inches up the page as the top potion depicts the toddler getting more and more sleepy until on the final spread the sleeping child joins the animals in the blue and purple sleep colors. Following this final spread is a note from the author and music to turn the text into a lullaby. After singing this in storytime, I had one preschool group immediately demand to hear it again and I can only imagine that similar results may occur if this is used as a bedtime book. While the simple illustrations worked well for group sharing, I think this would also work great for one-on-one reading time. You could even change things up when a child asks to hear it again at bedtime - you could sing it the first time, read it and talk about the illustrations the second time, and then close the book and just sing the lullaby to send the child off to sleep (or repeat the cycle as needed!). As a bonus, Lyon's tune for the lullaby is quite lovely as well. Turns out, a shortened version (just skip three or four verses) works well as the lullaby for a baby storytime, too.

Used for music themed storytime 3/3/09 and 3/5/09.
Used as music book for Preschool Partnerships November 2010 meeting.
Used abridged version for Go Baby Go! baby storytime 11/12/10. ( )