title: Lullaby Moons and a Silver Spoon: A Book of Bedtime Songs and Rhymes
author: Brooke Dyer
description: PreSchool-Grade 2-Lush watercolor illustrations decorate this assortment of 21 bedtime rhymes that range from the simple to the silly to the sleep-inducing. Jack Prelutsky, Christina Rossetti, and Nancy Willard are among the poets represented here. Among the works included are Eugene Field's "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod" and many different odes to the moon, such as Sue Cowling's "Half Moon Cottage," Kathryn Maxwell Smith's "The Moon," and John Rice's "Midnight's Moon." A variety of page layouts reinforces both the diversity and the dreamlike quality of the collection. Lutwidge Sedgwick's "Lullaby" is illustrated with numerous panels, a technique that incorporates many of the objects mentioned in the poem without giving the page a cluttered look. Mary Jane Carr's "Shop of Dreams" is set amid soft green hillsides with grazing sheep, a cozy thatch-roofed shop, and a rosy-cheeked moon floating over the horizon. Round-faced, stylized figures move about this dreamland where many shades of blue paint the night sky. More similar in mood to Jane Dyer's Animal Crackers (Little, Brown, 1996), this collection does not have the global approach of Jane Yolen's Sleep Rhymes around the World (Boyds Mills, 1994). All three books make wonderful choices for sharing aloud.<br /><i>Jane Marino, Scarsdale Public Library, NY</i><br />Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: **C h a p t e r 1**
  
  ’You maaaaake me feeeeel,’ Lottie Carlyle warbled
  
  soulfully at the top of her voice, ‘like a natural
  
  womaaaaan’
  
  Oh yes, the great thing about singing when your
  
  ears were underwater was that it made you sound so
  
  much better than in real life Not super-fantastic like Joss
  
  Stone or Barbra Streisand, obviously -the words silk purse
  
  and sow’s ear sprang to mind — but not so alarmingly bad
  
  that small children burst into tears and hid under tables
  
  whenever you opened your mouth to sing. Which had
  
  been known to happen on dry land.
  
  Which was why she was enjoying herself so
  
  much now, in Hestacombe Lake. It was a blisteringly hot
  
  day in August, her afternoon off, and she was floating on
  
  her back in the water gazing up at a cloudless, cobalt-
  
  blue sky.
  
  Well, nearly cloudless. When it was four o’clock in
  
  the afternoon and you were the mother of two children
  
  there was always that one small bothersome cloud
  
  hovering on the horizon: What to cook for dinner.
  
  Som