Kirkus Reviews (Fri Oct 04 00:00:00 CDT 2024)

A stylized, visually stunning introduction to animals and animal facts that doubles neatly as a bedtime story.In this French import, slumbering animals, insects, and sea creatures are depicted in highly detailed spreads paired with lyrical free verse. Delicate clusters of lines characterize the digital illustrations, which, dominated by black, resemble scratchboard with a modern twist: Vibrant neon-orange highlights the moonlit details on nearly every page. The visual and verbal pacing excels. Wordless full-bleed landscape endpapers and title pages gently draw readers in, inspiring quiet wonder and appreciation of the natural world before zooming in on the first featured creature: a sloth, asleep in a tree. What follows is an organic, loosely educational exploration of animals' experiences of sleep: In each spread, Simler's text, translated from the original French, cleverly acknowledges fact (the sloth sleeps "slung like a hammock") while entertaining flights of fancy ("the sloth dreams / of spring-loaded sprinters, / of rockets blasting off"). The creatures themselves are easily recognizable; many, refreshingly, are less-common subjects, including a humpback whale, a flamingo, and a wild boar. Every so often, the close-up animal spreads are punctuated by new wordless nighttime landscape spreads over which to linger. In the final spread, an unnamed light-skinned girl slumbers: a cue for readers to do the same. The satisfyingly large trim size, soothing pacing, and imaginative text invite shared (and frequent) reading.A delight. (Picture book. 3-8)

Starred Review for Kirkus Reviews (Thu Apr 28 00:00:00 CDT 2022)

A stylized, visually stunning introduction to animals and animal facts that doubles neatly as a bedtime story.In this French import, slumbering animals, insects, and sea creatures are depicted in highly detailed spreads paired with lyrical free verse. Delicate clusters of lines characterize the digital illustrations, which, dominated by black, resemble scratchboard with a modern twist: Vibrant neon-orange highlights the moonlit details on nearly every page. The visual and verbal pacing excels. Wordless full-bleed landscape endpapers and title pages gently draw readers in, inspiring quiet wonder and appreciation of the natural world before zooming in on the first featured creature: a sloth, asleep in a tree. What follows is an organic, loosely educational exploration of animals' experiences of sleep: In each spread, Simler's text, translated from the original French, cleverly acknowledges fact (the sloth sleeps "slung like a hammock") while entertaining flights of fancy ("the sloth dreams / of spring-loaded sprinters, / of rockets blasting off"). The creatures themselves are easily recognizable; many, refreshingly, are less-common subjects, including a humpback whale, a flamingo, and a wild boar. Every so often, the close-up animal spreads are punctuated by new wordless nighttime landscape spreads over which to linger. In the final spread, an unnamed light-skinned girl slumbers: a cue for readers to do the same. The satisfyingly large trim size, soothing pacing, and imaginative text invite shared (and frequent) reading.A delight. (Picture book. 3-8)

ALA Booklist (Fri Mar 01 00:00:00 CST 2019)

Twenty-eight slumbering creatures fill this visually arresting book of poems. Each animal occupies a double-page spread with a short poem (most are five to six lines) suggesting how it dreams, paired with an ­illustration pically a close-up portrait of the sleeper's face on one page and a more distant view on the other. For instance, the flamingo that "dreams in pink" is captured with its beak nestled in its feathers, in addition to snoozing atop one spindly leg in sunset-flecked water. Elsewhere, an elephant "dreams in granite," sleeping solidly upright. The alluring digital illustrations resemble scratchboard artwork, with an electric rainbow of color peeking through backdrops of black, blue, white, or pink, to name a few. Fine lines, which gained Simler admiration in Plume (2017), give the animal portraits a stunning, textured appearance, whether as hair, fur, or feather. The book's organization is loose, occasionally taking cues from a landscape spread, such as the moonlit ocean, beneath which rest a stingray and seahorse. The book's calming tone and drowsy animals destine it for bedside tables.

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Do animals dream? Whimsically pondering what could be in the minds of a menagerie of sleepers, Simler uses descriptive language to cleverly evoke dreams drawn from animals- distinguishing characteristics and habitats: -She settles on a rock, mimics a pebble, and sleeps like a stone. The octopus dreams in disguise.- -Tight inside his twisting shell, the snail stretches to the bottom of his bed. His dreams spiral out.- Each slumbering animal receives an illustrated spread accompanied by a brief prose poem. Wordless nighttime landscapes punctuate these reveries, languorously extending the book-s rhythmic pace. Staticky scratched lines of color highlighted with electric orange against deep inky backgrounds offer an energizing contrast to more common depictions of rest, subtly reminding readers that dreaming, too, is an action. Ages 4-8. (Mar.)