NASLA'S DREAM

This French import about a child’s nighttime coping mechanisms asks, why grow up too fast?

Young Nasla has decided she is old enough to sleep without her favorite plush animals and toys. But at night, she sees a yellow dot in the darkness and a shadow above the wardrobe, where her father put her toys. Could that dot be her toy turtle? And when the shadow moves, she discovers it’s Timboubou, her toy elephant, who appears as a flesh-and-blood elephant in Nasla’s nocturnal visions. Nasla repeatedly tries to talk herself into an independence that the illustrations make clear she is not ready to accept. She may remind herself that she’s a “big girl now” and that night is for sleeping (not playing), but she admits that she wants to dance with the Moon, who appears in three forms (yellow, red, and silver) on human legs, and she dreams of her old toys. The delightfully bizarre, dreamlike illustrations of the girl’s fantastical night visions possess a simple elegance. And there’s a poignancy to Nasla’s decision, after she imagines ominous, long-armed ghosts and giant squids and hears “breathing in the dark,” to cling to a small blanket her mother gave her when she was a baby (her “secret charm”)—to keep herself safe from the yellow eyes (their source is revealed as feline at the book’s close) and the eccentric and surreal creatures she sees in her mind’s eye. Nasla has pale skin and bright red hair.

Trippy and touching.