WHERE DO BIG CREATURES SLEEP AT NIGHT?

Animals from lions and elephants to crocodiles and anacondas bed down.

Actually, when it comes to the anaconda, “no one really knows if it actually does sleep.” But that’s not the only poetic license the father-and-son co-authors take as they record in stumbling metrics (“An ostrich is a bird that’s incredibly tall. / Its eggs can be bigger than a softball”) and a notably loose rhyme scheme not only where, but how various animals larger than those in Steven J. Simmons’ Where Do Creatures Sleep at Night? (2021), illustrated by Harper, first spend their days and then enjoy their downtime. The connection between text and images isn’t all that firm either, as the silverback gorilla gets male pronouns and the pride of lions collective ones, but all the rest of the animals are nongendered as its even though they appear to be mothers, since Harper depicts them alone with offspring in cozy proximity. An opening spread of toy animals held by variously toned hands hints at unsurprising closing scenes of human children, including a brown-skinned child, taking the final couplet to heart: “Then at night after you’re fed, / you snuggle up in your own sweet bed!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Light doses of natural history, but better written and more somniferous bedtime reads abound.