LITTLE BO PEEP CAN’T GET TO SLEEP

An over-the-moon bedtime read, featuring steady rhythms, accurate rhymes and a tuffetful of Mother Goose references. Thanks to Little Boy Blue’s horn-blowing, Bo Peep’s sheep have run off in fright. Where did they go? “She asked the Farmer in the Dell, / and Jack and Jill up by the well. / No one had seen her missing sheep. / A wolf might get them! worried Peep.” At last, kindly Humpty Dumpty tells her to go home; he’ll keep looking. But Bo Peep has another problem: what to tell Mom and Dad? As in a previous outing, Goldie Locks Has Chicken Pox (2002), Wakiyama mixes modern and traditional elements into simple, spacious illustrations, thus pleasing younger viewers, who will have no trouble identifying the nursery-rhyme characters, and also older ones, who can both appreciate the humor and sympathize with Bo Peep’s dilemma. In the end, Humpty rounds up the sheep and Bo Peep ’fesses up with proper remorse, before tallying her way to dreamland (guess how). Rockabye, baby. (Picture book. 5-7)