PreS-Gr 1 Each time a parent tells a boy to go to bed, the toys in his room delay the process by playing their instruments and saying they can't be disturbed. A gnome in his little home plays a bass drum, an elf underneath the shelf plays a gong, a prince makes people wince with his loud bassoon, and so on, coming full circle back to the gnome and a very tired child asleep at last, surrounded by his miniature musicians. The rhythmical text has an appealing cadence and a catchy refrain. Ibatoulline's watercolor and acrylic-gouache spreads of the child's room are wonderfully designed, and readers see everything from the playthings' perspective. Huge books, plants, and furniture bleed off the pages. The artist singles out each new toy on its own page along with its sound printed in bold. Then it reappears on the next spread along with previous toys and their sounds so that eventually, a weaving parade of music makers and their sounds march across the pages. Only at the end do children see the real music maker. While this noisy story won't lull little ones to sleep any time soon, they will have a grand time repeating the refrain and the sounds. They may even drop from exhaustion along with the young protagonist."Marianne Saccardi, formerly at Norwalk Community College, CT" Copyright 2010 Media Source Inc.
Toys in a little boy's bedroom want to play their instruments instead of going to sleep, and each tells his or her parent to "Go away!" The colorful yet muted illustrations provide free-form counterpoint to the rhyming onomatopoeic ("bong bong / clink clink / plong plong") text. The "go away" refrain, however, seems to undermine the spirit of bedtime.
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