Review by New York Times Review
MARGARET WISE BROWN firmly believed that home is where the heart is. For nearly 70 years, her classic bedtime story "Goodnight Moon" has lulled children to sleep with a picture of the warm comforts of home. But if the book is disarmingly heartfelt, it is also undeniably strange. It is set in a mysterious "great green room" where, page by page, the light grows more weirdly crepuscular. The room's curious props include a comb, a brush and a bowl full of mush. Its most memorable line, "Goodnight nobody," could have been written by Samuel Beckett. It is a brilliant children's book, but its brilliance lies in its dreamlike oddity. Like a good witch, Brown weaves a kindly spell, and children succumb. Three new picture books appear to be carrying on Brown's particular brand of hearth-centricity: They swaddle children in the comforts of home, and they are filled with captivating quirks. But at the same time, these books amply demonstrate how much things have changed. In their different ways, the authors use the notion of home for purposes that shoot far beyond Brown's bewitching, sleep-inducing agenda. "A Fine Dessert" is written by Emily Jenkins and illustrated by Sophie Blackall. Its subtitle announces, "Four Centuries, Four Families, One Delicious Treat," which pretty much covers the ambitious narrative of the book. We see a creamy dessert called blackberry fool being prepared four times, in the early 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. The settings are four households in the English town of Lyme, in Charleston, S.C., in Boston and in San Diego. The cooks are four teams of two, each pairing a parent and a child. In each of the kitchen scenes, the preparation of the dessert is repeated, but with many variations, paying strict attention to historical accuracy. The cream for the dessert arrives via cow, wagon, milkman and supermarket. It is whipped with a bundle of twigs, a metal whisk, a rotary beater and an electric mixer. Through four centuries, we even track the history of refrigeration. Jenkins and Blackall show changes in family dynamics and social mores as well. In a bold and somewhat unsettling choice, they portray a smiling slave woman and her daughter in 1810 Charleston, preparing dessert for the happy, well-fed family of a Southern plantation owner. After the family eats dinner, mother and child huddle in a closet, licking the bowl. Inevitably, the book's theme-and-variations device is a little repetitive and, for a child, rather academic (the fast two pages are devoted to exhaustive historical notes from both writer and illustrator, complete with bibliography). But "A Fine Dessert" has its abundant charms and, with the guidance of a helpful reader, it can serve to nurture a child's budding interest in social history. Even better, the book teaches parents and children how to fix blackberry fool, making the project sound easy and fun and making your mouth water when you hear it read out loud. The title of Carson Ellis's delightful book proclaims its subject: It's called simply "Home." The cover art shows a grid of 21 small images of domiciles, resembling the icons on a computer desktop. Inside, we see different kinds of homes, each accompanied by a bald, declarative sentence (several of the sentences begin with the words "This is the home of...."). The homes are depicted in Ellis's droll illustrations, rendered in muted colors and a faux-naïf style that suggests a younger, hipper Grandma Moses. With the turn of every page, the definition of "home" broadens. We jump from a country house to a city apartment, from a wigwam to a palace, and before you know it, we are in the Old Woman's Shoe, of nursery rhyme fame. By the end we have visited a beehive, a raccoon's nest, a condo on the surface of the moon and the tour bus of a rock band. The band, incidentally, is clearly the Decemberists, the Portland, Ore.-based group whose lead singer is Ellis's husband, Colin Meloy. The text below the picture coyly identifies the folk-rock troupe: "Some folks live on the road." We see the tour bus parked outside a theater, surrounded by band members toting their equipment. Ellis portrays herself smiling and waving from the bus window. Toward the end of the book she reappears in her artist's studio, and in the fast spread there she is again in the window of her own cottage in the country. The text simply states, "This is my home, and this is me." You would think that Ellis's self-referential in-jokes might be annoyingly narcissistic, bypassing the kids to amuse the grown-ups. Instead, her sly humor and irreverent spirit only endear her to kids and grown-ups alike. "YOU NEST HERE WITH ME" is a charmer written by the mother-and-daughter team Jane Yolen and Heidi E.Y. Stemple. The authors have chosen a bird's nest to suggest a child's comfy bedroom and have extended the metaphor over 30 pages: "Like baby bird, your nest can be/Anywhere there's you and me," they announce. In a lovely image by the illustrator Melissa Sweet, the cover shows a young girl fast asleep under a bright red blanket. In the foreground is a nest of sleeping chicks with their watchful mother perched above them. If you read the book from start to finish, you can easily imagine a child fast asleep by the last page. But as with the other two, this book has more on its mind than simply lulling. A mom reads to her daughter at bedtime from a copy of the book itself. The two look out the window at a family of pigeons on a ledge. On the next page a catbird tends her eggs. Next is a nest of wrens. Then come grackles, coots, plovers and so on. This book, you see, is a lullaby in the guise of a child's ornithology primer. To introduce the various bird species, Yolen and Stemple have written delicate rhyming stanzas, each ending with that soothing title phrase, "You nest here with me." Sweet's fine watercolors are gently playful and zoologically accurate. The book's three creators share a consuming interest in birds (just look at the bird catalog on the last two pages). They've come up with a bedtime book warmed by the comforts of home. But it also does the best possible job of encouraging children to become bird-watchers for life. JOHN LITHGOW, the actor and musician, is the author of nine children's picture books, most recently, "Never Play Music Right Next to the Zoo."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [March 15, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Do we need another good-night book? The answer is unequivocally yes when it is as imaginative and original as this one. Yolen, Stemple, and Sweet have created a bedtime book rooted in the natural order of things, here the life of birds. The text alternates between two and three lines of rhyme, providing a rhythm to the telling, but returning to end each stanza with you nest here with me, gives the young listener comfort as well as encouragement to participate in the story. Background information is given in the endpapers to identify and add general information to Sweet's gloriously illustrated birds, but throughout, her pictures capture the essence and the joy of the natural world. Beginning in the child's bedroom, where tree branches form the bedstead and birds are in windows and a sketchbook, we move outdoors to experience birds and their families on ledges, in hedges, soaring, and snuggling. Greens and blues dominate many of the pages, providing a sense of liveliness and well-being in a world that birds share with other creatures, flowers, leaves, and buildings. Informative as well as lovely, this delights the eye, mind, and heart.--Ching, Edie Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Frequent mother-daughter collaborators Yolen and Stemple, whose previous books include Not All Princesses Dress in Pink, offer a gentle rhyming bedtime story that spotlights 14 birds' nesting habits and habitats. At bedtime, a human mother lulls her own "nestling" to sleep with verses that flit from bird to bird, before concluding with a reassuring refrain: "Pigeons nest on concrete ledges,/ Catbirds nest in greening hedges,/ Tiny wrens, in shoreline sedges./ You nest here with me." Caldecott Honor artist Sweet's (A River of Words) mixed-media illustrations portray familiar types of birds (pigeons, swallows, owls) alongside lesser-known killdeer, grackles, and coots, capturing their urban, seaside, wetland, or forest environs in bright swaths of watercolor paint and soft pencils. Some vocabulary (boles, tors) and observations ("Killdeer, once their eggs are laid,/ Perform a broken-wing charade") invite further investigation; concluding notes provide explanatory details ("To lure predators away from their eggs, killdeer act like easy prey by faking a broken wing") and other information about each bird. A well-crafted and informative window onto the world of winged creatures. Ages 4-8. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-K-As she puts her daughter to bed, a mother shares a soothing rhyme about birds that nest in places far and near. Each rhymed triplet is followed by the repeated assurance: "But you nest here with me." Sweet's watercolor and gouache landscapes reveal adult birds watching over nestlings. Coots hide in cozy cattail reeds; terns wheel above cliffs; plovers explore sandy shores. Each vista includes many details for viewers to ponder. Older listeners (or adult readers) can find additional information about the featured birds in two pages of authors' notes, which encourage prospective bird watchers. However, the book probably will be read most often as a comforting prelude to sleep. VERDICT A worthwhile purchase for collections that need new selections for bedtime sharing.-Kathy Piehl, Minnesota State University Library, Mankato (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
Yolen and Stemple gracefully incorporate natural science into a comforting picture book comparing various nesting birds with a "nesting" child ("My little nestling, time for bed"). Some birds, such as pigeons, which "nest on concrete ledges," will be familiar to many children, while others may be less so: "Grackles nest in high fir trees / Terns all nest in colonies." Almost always, the verse ends with the soothing refrain, "But you nest here with me." Sweet's watercolor, gouache, and mixed-media illustrations use rich colors and delicate lines. The pictures are both accurate and arresting, page after page. Many details are included for children to pick out, such as a frog mother and child sitting on a log near a coot's nest, or a fox gazing interestedly at a killdeer performing a "broken-wing charade" to protect her babies. A closing spread includes additional facts about each bird, along with a picture of its shape, feather, and egg. Science meets wonder in this deeply satisfying collaboration between poets and artist. susan dove lempke (c) Copyright 2015. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Nestling her young child in for the night, a mother shares in rhyme the many ways birds bed down to sleep. "Swallows nest above barn doors, / Plovers nest on sandy shores, // Eagles nest upon high tors, / But you nest here with me." With an easy cadence and a comforting anchor, Yolen and Stemple drift from cowbird to killdeer, bedding down winged creatures while always returning to the safety of mom and home. Sweet's illustrations, done in watercolor, gouache and mixed media, use a soft palette of blues and greens in double-page spreads that capture the essence of each bird. The text and the images work well together, balancing the mood of quiet comfort with avian description. With a variety of nest types, the birds show that "home" can be wherever your loved one is close by. Although it has clear application as a bedtime book, there is also a nature book hovering in the wings. The authors' note provides information such as diet, markings and locations on 14 different birds. The images of each bird's egg and feather along with its silhouette will surely captivate budding ornithologists. As a whole, the book ably carries readers past many flying friends and lands with ease in a safe nest. (Picture book. 3-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
