GOOD NIGHT, I LOVE YOU

A sweet, softly illustrated addition to the genre of children’s rhyming bedtime books.

Each page of this tenderly illustrated board book contains a four-line poem about a different animal saying good night to its children. The characters include such toddler favorites as bears, ducks, and cats while also incorporating more unusual animals such as elephants and foxes. Though mother animals predominate, the bear and fox parents have unspecified genders, and the parent dog and elephant are both daddies. The softly smudged illustrations convey a soothing, sleepy feeling, and a cutout crescent-moon shape in the corner gives small hands a chance to explore more than just a flat surface. While the text is not particularly original, the soothing rhymes and repetitive structure cater perfectly to the literary tastes of young readers.

Overall, a sweet if not inspiring book that readers will enjoy, though they are not likely to remember it long.