Once: A Lullaby

Full-color, tapestry-like illustrations highlight this lullaby

PreSchool-Grade 1 A loving, comfortable bedtime book which portrays 16 small animal children and two human children as one by one they fall asleep in bedrooms replete with images of themselves. Text, illustrations, and simple piano music are repetitive and flowing; children can participate by supplying the animal sound in each stanza: "Once I was a little horse, /baby horse, little horse. /Once I was a little horse/NEIGH, I fell asleep." The repetition in language is beautifully echoed in the illustrations, so that the young creature in each of the 18 vignettes also becomes the focus of the design of the wallpaper, bed, bedspread, doll, books, and furniture. Lobel's muted colors, her attention to detail , and the small naturalistic border designs are absorbing. The three elements of language, art, and music work harmoniously together. A gentle, original bedtime book that should have the desired effect whether read or sung. Susan Patron, Los Angeles Public Library
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"Once I was a little horse,/ baby horse, little horse./ Once I was a little horse./ NEIGH, I fell asleep./ Once I was a little cow,/ baby cow, little cow./ Once I was a little cow./ MOO, I fell asleep." Sixteen other little ones fall asleep in the course of this lullaby book, including a boy and girl, each one snugly in bed. Nichol's words seem like dear old friends from the first reading, as familiar as Mother Goose, and perhaps as enduring. Lobel's opulent paintings have a rhythm all their own, and a less than sleepy child can find similarities and differences among the pictures: each creature has a chamber pot, pull toy and books; the boy sleeps in a boat, the girl in a bed with heart-shaped head- and footboards. Wallpaper and pictures on walls are covered with further renditions of the dreaming animals. The one unnecessary touch is the musical score provided in the back of the book; Nichol's and Lobel's collaboration is already a harmonious bedtime offering.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.