Night-Night Canada: A Sleepy Bedtime Rhyme. Katherine Sully. Illustrated by Helen Poole. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks (Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books), 2016. 20 pp., board book, $13.99. ISBN 978-1-4926-4769-0. Preschool / Ages 1-4. Review by Dave Jenkinson. **� /4

excerpt:

Goodnight stores and plazas.
It�s closing time downtown

So put away your toys and treats
and pull your shutters down.

As parents know, the period immediately before youngsters� bedtimes should be a time of gearing down and becoming quiet. In the board book Night-Night Canada, author Sully and illustrator Poole offer 10 double-page spreads in which Sully�s simple rhyming text and Poole�s cartoon-like illustrations model people and places doing just that � becoming quiet. In some instances, the illustrated scenes, such as that of a fire station or a shopping mall, are quite generic and could be found in almost �anywhere� Canada. Other illustrations, however, are accurate renditions of actual Canadian locations, including the lighthouse at Cap-des-Rosiers, QC, or the Centre Bell in Montreal. Still others are a blend in which a somewhat generic illustration carries a label of a real place, three examples being the Calgary zoo, the Royal Tyrrell Museum and Toronto�s High Park. The closing spread features a collage of Canadian landmarks (not to scale) that includes the Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg, Montreal�s Biosphere, Edmonton�s Telus World of Science, Calgary�s Saddledome, Ottawa�s Parliament Hill and Toronto�s CN Tower.

      Poole�s racial and gender-aware illustrations are full of quiet detail that invites young �readers� to linger over the pages.

      Night-Night Canada would be a useful additional purchase for home collections and libraries serving this age group.

Recommended.

Dave Jenkinson, CM�s editor, lives in Winnipeg, MB.

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