Animal Lullabies

Children's Literature - Sheree van Vreede

Listen to the soothing poetry between mother and child. Watch momma and baby giraffe settle down for the night. Each animal's lullaby is told using their distinct personalities and environments. As in this excerpt from the "Prairie Dog Lullaby," the language is serene: "Like dust devils, like moonlight, like tumbleweed passing through cottonwood." If these lyrics succeed in their purpose, children will go to bed feeling safe and protected.

School Library Journal

Gr 2-4Ten animals use words of reassurance as nighttime envelops their habitat. A giraffe croons to her nephew, "Be still, my sweetheart,/your momma's on her way." An alligator warns potential predators, "Stay away now or I'll eat you alive!" A prairie dog whispers, "Hush, it's only darkness./Hush, it's just the wind." Cowdrey's lovely, dreamlike illustrations will draw readers to this book, but the poems have sometimes jarring, less-than-lyrical lines. An inviting drawing of a starfish and an oyster scraping the ocean floor is matched with this opening phrase: "The sea is deep and dark at night./Clat. Clat. Clatty dunk./Time to close up tight." On the other hand, the final selection, "Owl's Lullaby to Her Daughter," perfectly matches the comforting portrait of mother owl waking her sleeping owlet for a nighttime rendezvous. All in all, the poems vary in effectiveness while Cowdrey's dark-toned watercolors are uniformly arresting.Barbara McGinn, Oak Hill Elementary School, Severna Park, MD

Kirkus Reviews

Various adult creatures—among them, prairie dogs, oysters, beavers, crocodiles—sing their children to sleep in their own particular styles. The swan's lullaby (to "swanlings" instead of cygnets) is smooth and mesmerizing, the giraffe is quietly reassuring. Some of the others are downright noisy: The mother beaver calls her babies home with a "SLAP! SLAP! WHACKUM!" of her tail, and the mother crocodile threatens to eat intruders alive in "Alligator Lullaby." In a final twist, the owl mother gently sings her daughter awake. Cowdrey sets the mood with midnight blue endpapers spangled with stars and a crescent moon. His stylized illustrations present the animals from a variety of interesting angles. Many of the illustrations appear to be silvered by moonlight, and the book has a pleasant design with framed full-page illustrations facing text printed on blocks of shaded color. For purists, occasional inconsistencies detract from the whole—the name of baby swans, for example, or the chimpanzees in the picture that accompanies "Monkey Lullaby." Overall, though, it's a very pleasant bedtime book.