A review by leslie_d
Bedtime for Sweet Creatures by Nikki Grimes
5.0
Love this one. I would’ve owned it, for sure.
A Mom, the narrator, coaxes her Sweet Creature to bed. Every page is alive with color, texture and evidence of some creature or another. Bears, Lions, Growling, Hissing, Loping... Grimes and Zunon trace the reluctance of sleep to checking under beds to last glasses of water and another trip to the bathroom until one last request.
“In crawl owl, bear, snake, kitty, fawn, squirrel, koala, tiger, wolf…and one very sleepy child.”
The application of image in both illustration and text is unusual and disarming…Grimes and Zunon have created an utterly charming bedtime story. The child’s sweetness is at times tongue in cheek, but sincere. Like the animals the child mimics or is likened to, there is a precious quality, a delight one savors—a sweetness.
Grimes is smooth, well-versed in the construction of story and the transitions of imagery. She binds it all up in a culminating event (like bedtime) and in the body of a definite force of nature (a child).
Bedtime for Sweet Creatures is sure to be a favorite with its young audiences, charmed by both mother and child, their antics, the bright patterned images of the animals. The noises and actions are sure to inspire playfulness for the reader and listener. And it is sure to take the edge off any reluctance to bedtime—for child and caregiver. Grimes and Zunon remind us of the beautiful wildness and vulnerability of a child, and we’ll want to hold these moments and this book all the closer because of it. It is a Bedtime book for Sweet Creatures, for both the children and their Moms.*
*And Dads…he’s there too, reading, and later, tucked in like a good creature at bedtime.
A Mom, the narrator, coaxes her Sweet Creature to bed. Every page is alive with color, texture and evidence of some creature or another. Bears, Lions, Growling, Hissing, Loping... Grimes and Zunon trace the reluctance of sleep to checking under beds to last glasses of water and another trip to the bathroom until one last request.
“In crawl owl, bear, snake, kitty, fawn, squirrel, koala, tiger, wolf…and one very sleepy child.”
The application of image in both illustration and text is unusual and disarming…Grimes and Zunon have created an utterly charming bedtime story. The child’s sweetness is at times tongue in cheek, but sincere. Like the animals the child mimics or is likened to, there is a precious quality, a delight one savors—a sweetness.
Grimes is smooth, well-versed in the construction of story and the transitions of imagery. She binds it all up in a culminating event (like bedtime) and in the body of a definite force of nature (a child).
Bedtime for Sweet Creatures is sure to be a favorite with its young audiences, charmed by both mother and child, their antics, the bright patterned images of the animals. The noises and actions are sure to inspire playfulness for the reader and listener. And it is sure to take the edge off any reluctance to bedtime—for child and caregiver. Grimes and Zunon remind us of the beautiful wildness and vulnerability of a child, and we’ll want to hold these moments and this book all the closer because of it. It is a Bedtime book for Sweet Creatures, for both the children and their Moms.*
*And Dads…he’s there too, reading, and later, tucked in like a good creature at bedtime.