Any day there’s a new book by Lesléa Newman is a good day. Her latest story is a sweet bedtime poem celebrating the natural world and different types of families.
“As the crows fly / and the rivers flow, / As the eagles cry / and the winds blow,” begins As Babies Dream (Bookshop; Amazon), by the author of Heather Has Two Mommies and more than 70 other books. Gentle rhymes tell of animal parents and offspring, both wild and domestic, going about their lives and eventually settling in to sleep, as the Earth, moon, and stars continue their movements around them. Newman, who was poet laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts from 2008–2010, crafts her phrases carefully, with an ear for rhyme, rhythm, and alliteration.
Illustrator Taia Morley gradually shifts the colors on each lush and vibrant page towards darker blues and purples as night settles in. On the last page, we see a neighborhood of human parents and children, light glowing warmly from their windows, and read, “As the stars gleam / high above, / the babies dream / safe in our love.”
The families portrayed include one with two moms, one with two dads, one with a single mother, and two with a mom and a dad. The two-mom family appears to be Black, the others White or Latinx. A dad in one family wears a kippah/yarmulke, indicating that the family is Jewish.
This soothing book from Magination Press is bound to become a beloved bedtime read for many families.
You may also want to check out Newman’s two board books from earlier this year, ABC Cats: An Alpha-Cat Book (Bookshop; Amazon) and 123 Cats: A Cat Counting Book (Bookshop; Amazon), both from Candlewick and illustrated by Isabella Kung. There’s no queer representation—in fact, there’s no human representation—but there are plenty of cats.
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