BEDTIME FOR SWEET CREATURES

Nikki Grimes, author

Elizabeth Zunon, illustrator

Hardcover, 32 pages

Published January 14th, 2020 by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky  

ISBN: 1492638323 (ISBN13: 9781492638322)

Such a treat! A beautifully illustrated hardcover book by Nikki Grimes and illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon. Zunon's illustrations use brilliant colors that lift right off the page. Her sweet creature's expressions are beautifully done. Grime's mommy is admirably calm and patient, and her sweet creature is full of spirit. The language used is alive, active and strong. The story and the illustrations perform well together, making Grimes and Zunon a talented team.

***Thanks to Nikki Grimes, Author, Elizabeth Zunon, illustrator, Sourcebooks Jabberwocky and Multicultural Children's Book Day for the opportunity to read and review this book. I won this through an MCBD giveaway.***

This book is written in poetry form and follows a young girl as she discovers mementos of her family as well as when she is seeing wonders while visiting her grandmother. This young girl gets to discover, through poetry, her mom's childhood and all of the wonders that she got to see in person. Each page features a poem from the young girl's perspective as well as one from her mother's perspective. Readers can tell which poem is which by the fact that the mother and the young girl have different hair styles, and the young girl has poems in regular text on the left, while her mother's are in italics on the right. 

Once I understood the flow of the book I really enjoyed reading the parallel styles of the mother's and daughter's poems. However, for younger readers having the poems set up in this way could be confusing, it took me a few pages to really understand what was going on. But, once this is understood it is a great book to use for poetry analysis. I would recommend this book to older readers as a way to introduce poetry.

Happy reading everyone,

Mrs. Emory