It's Time to Say Good Night

PreS—Using lyrics from Betty Comden and Adolph Green's song "I Said Good Morning," a young boy greets the day with joy. In rhyming format, he says good morning to everything he sees, "the sun, the hills, the chickies and the hens, the rooster, the cow, the piggies in the pen" as he moves from a rural setting to the city…. Good morning to the planes, the buses, the taxis and the vans, the trucks, the cars, the garbage, and the cans." Then he reverses the order as he returns home telling everything good night, while the illustrations darken, preparing everything (including young listeners) for sleep. In the end, the boy is tucked in bed while his mother watches from the doorway. The childlike black line drawings are colored in with primary watercolors surrounded by irregular blocky outlines, an appealing and well-suited style for the text. With wonderful repetition of words, this book will be read over and over.—Sandra Welzenbach, Villarreal Elementary School, San Antonio, TX