GOOD NIGHT, WORLD

Written by Willa Perlman
Illustrated by Carolyn Fisher
Beach Lane Books / Simon & Schuster

The sun is setting, darkness is falling, and from east to west, all across the land, the world is getting ready for bed. Join a young boy and his high-flying friend as they travel the Earth and bid good night to our magnificent spinning planet.

PRAISE

"A youngster settling into bed ponders a curious fact: 'Elsewhere in the world it's light,/ It's morning there, but here it's night.' This leads him to imagine the bird on the window sill flying around the world to say goodnight to everything. Beginning with stars and planets, passing through deserts, mountains and oceans, bidding goodnight to rain forests and animals far away, the bird comes closer and closer to home, to the child's own street and house, yard animals and, finally his siblings and friends. 'Good night, world,/ as darkness brings.../SWEET DREAMS to every living thing.' The dreaming child curls up with a stuffed rabbit and the bird. Fisher's slightly surreal mixed-media illustrations on double page spreads combine painted patterns, textures and surprising colors. An oryx bounds across a marbled pink-and-blue desert. Greenish whales cavort in breaking Hokusai-inspired waves, midnight blue and capped with white against a pink sky. On one spread, trees are drawn as crayoned triangles: on another, a single leaf, apparently collage, forms the body. There is much to see and think about in the illustrations for this simple bedtime rhyme. Fittingly, the text concludes with a list of ways to say goodnight in 16 languages, written in appropriate scripts and including pronunciations. A sweet dream, indeed."

--Kirkus