Woodland Dreams

November 2, 2020
In a classic-feeling narrative that features graceful verse and detailed artwork, readers follow a child with peach skin and long sandy hair as she bids goodnight to animals at day’s end. Clad in a teal coat and red-orange boots, she pads through the woods with her black dog, repeating the phrase “Come home” to each animal they encounter—“Come home, Bushy Tail,” to a squirrel. Each spread presents rhythmic, rhyming lines about the animal: “Meadow hopper/ Clover cropper/ Twilight whispers. Time to furrow./ Curl up tight inside your burrow,” reads the page for Long Ears, a rabbit, as the child nears home herself. A warmly autumnal color palette, rich with browns, oranges, and forest greens, enriches the illustrations, which present expansive forest scenes in grainy and sponge-like textures. A cozy goodnight read for sleepy animal lovers. Ages 3–5.

Starred review from September 15, 2020
A sonorous, soporific invitation to join woodland creatures in bedding down for the night. As in her Moon Babies, illustrated by Amy Hevron (2019), Jameson displays a rare gift for harmonious language and rhyme. She leads off with a bear: "Come home, Big Paws. / Berry picker / Honey trickster / Shadows deepen in the glen. / Lumber back inside your den." Continuing in the same pattern, she urges a moose ("Velvet Nose"), a deer ("Tiny Hooves"), and a succession of ever smaller creatures to find their nooks and nests as twilight deepens in Boutavant's woodsy, autumnal scenes and snow begins to drift down. Through each of those scenes quietly walks an alert White child (accompanied by an unusually self-controlled pooch), peering through branches or over rocks at the animals in the foregrounds and sketching them in a notebook. The observer's turn comes round at last, as a bearded parent beckons: "This way, Small Boots. / Brave trailblazer / Bright stargazer / Cabin's toasty. Blanket's soft. / Snuggle deep in sleeping loft." The animals go unnamed, leaving it to younger listeners to identify each one from the pictures...if they can do so before the verses' murmurous tempo closes their eyes. Sweet fare for bed- or naptimes, with a light frosting of natural history. (Picture book. 4-6)

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