DREAMLAND

A bedtime book for little dreamers.

This isn’t your typical bedtime book about a child who resists going to sleep. No, “Amelie loved everything about bedtime.” The girl snuggles up close to her father to listen to stories and doesn’t protest or stall his departure because “more than anything, she loved to dream.” The tension in the story arises because “her dreams were often hard to find.” At this point in the book, the watercolor-and-ink illustrations depart from the realistic depiction of Amelie’s bedroom to show a forest growing therein, à la Where the Wild Things Are. Amelie searches for dreams in varied landscapes, leading readers to wonder if this searching is itself the dream she chases. The ambiguity may frustrate some readers but will doubtlessly charm others, who will follow her through the melding of pieces of her room into fantastic dreamscapes, with a home-again resolution that shows her smiling in her sleep because she’s “found herself in her favorite dreams.” Amelie and her father both present white.

Dreamy, indeed.