All the Awake Animals are Almost Asleep

All the Awake Animals are Almost Asleep
by Crescent Dragonwagon, illustrated by David McPhail
Little, Brown and Company, 2012. Unpaged. Picture Book.

A young mother coaxes her son towards sleep with an alphabet full of animals who are themselves headed to bed. The title alone will tell you that this is not a simple A is for Apple kind of alphabet book. Each animal's bedtime story is filled with the sounds of its name: "Baby Bison has bedded down beside her brother, by the barn," and "Cat's curled up on a crimson couch cushion." David McPhail's sumptuous paintings of snuggling and heavy-lidded creatures large and small will no doubt make adults sleepy. Here's hoping it works on the little ones, too.

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