A gorgeous bedtime book from an award-winning creator
From the celebrated creator of Plume and The Blue Hour comes another enchanting animal book. Countless cozy animals are settling in for the night, but they all sleep in different ways. A bat dreams upside down, a hedgehog snuggles into a pile of leaves, and a humpback whale spins in its sleep like a ballerina.
With its poetic language and lush illustrations, Sweet Dreamers will dazzle young readers as they drift off to sleep themselves.
Starred review from March 1, 2019
K-Gr 3-Lyrical language and stunning, semi-realistic digital artwork strike a serene balance between dreamland and the natural world. Atmospheric spreads and imagery-packed verses depict a variety of sleeping animals in their habitats. "The humpback whale/dreams vertically... Balancing on her head/or the tip of her tail, /this ballerina nosedives/into sleep." Some of the entries lean more toward the whimsical: "Slung like a hammock, /the sloth dreams/of spring-loaded sprinters, /of rockets blasting off, /of pump-action spinning tops./When the stopwatch starts, /our dreaming racer/doesn't move/an inch." Contrasting dusky hues with bright oranges and greens, Simler's handsomely composed images expertly use lines to create texture and depth. Most animals are depicted with both a full-body image and a zoomed-in shot. Wordless double-page renderings of various biomes are interspersed throughout, providing opportunity to discuss species' habitats. A glowing full moon adorns many of the spreads, adding continuity and building toward the final scene, where a child dreams of interacting with these animals "beneath the moon." VERDICT Share this exquisite offering as an introduction to the sleep habits of different animals, an imagination-stirring example for poetry writing, or a soothing bedtime story to inspire sweet dreams.-Joy Fleishhacker, Pikes Peak Library District, Colorado Springs
Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from February 15, 2019
A stylized, visually stunning introduction to animals and animal facts that doubles neatly as a bedtime story.In this French import, slumbering animals, insects, and sea creatures are depicted in highly detailed spreads paired with lyrical free verse. Delicate clusters of lines characterize the digital illustrations, which, dominated by black, resemble scratchboard with a modern twist: Vibrant neon-orange highlights the moonlit details on nearly every page. The visual and verbal pacing excels. Wordless full-bleed landscape endpapers and title pages gently draw readers in, inspiring quiet wonder and appreciation of the natural world before zooming in on the first featured creature: a sloth, asleep in a tree. What follows is an organic, loosely educational exploration of animals' experiences of sleep: In each spread, Simler's text, translated from the original French, cleverly acknowledges fact (the sloth sleeps "slung like a hammock") while entertaining flights of fancy ("the sloth dreams / of spring-loaded sprinters, / of rockets blasting off"). The creatures themselves are easily recognizable; many, refreshingly, are less-common subjects, including a humpback whale, a flamingo, and a wild boar. Every so often, the close-up animal spreads are punctuated by new wordless nighttime landscape spreads over which to linger. In the final spread, an unnamed light-skinned girl slumbers: a cue for readers to do the same. The satisfyingly large trim size, soothing pacing, and imaginative text invite shared (and frequent) reading.A delight. (Picture book. 3-8)
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March 1, 2019
Grades K-3 Twenty-eight slumbering creatures fill this visually arresting book of poems. Each animal occupies a double-page spread with a short poem (most are five to six lines) suggesting how it dreams, paired with an �illustration?typically a close-up portrait of the sleeper's face on one page and a more distant view on the other. For instance, the flamingo that dreams in pink is captured with its beak nestled in its feathers, in addition to snoozing atop one spindly leg in sunset-flecked water. Elsewhere, an elephant dreams in granite, sleeping solidly upright. The alluring digital illustrations resemble scratchboard artwork, with an electric rainbow of color peeking through backdrops of black, blue, white, or pink, to name a few. Fine lines, which gained Simler admiration in Plume (2017), give the animal portraits a stunning, textured appearance, whether as hair, fur, or feather. The book's organization is loose, occasionally taking cues from a landscape spread, such as the moonlit ocean, beneath which rest a stingray and seahorse. The book's calming tone and drowsy animals destine it for bedside tables.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)
Starred review from May 27, 2019
Do animals dream? Whimsically pondering what could be in the minds of a menagerie of sleepers, Simler uses descriptive language to cleverly evoke dreams drawn from animals’ distinguishing characteristics and habitats: “She settles on a rock, mimics a pebble, and sleeps like a stone. The octopus dreams in disguise.” “Tight inside his twisting shell, the snail stretches to the bottom of his bed. His dreams spiral out.” Each slumbering animal receives an illustrated spread accompanied by a brief prose poem. Wordless nighttime landscapes punctuate these reveries, languorously extending the book’s rhythmic pace. Staticky scratched lines of color highlighted with electric orange against deep inky backgrounds offer an energizing contrast to more common depictions of rest, subtly reminding readers that dreaming, too, is an action. Ages 4–8.