How Great to Hibernate!: Sleep, Black Bear, Sleep

Jane Yolen, working with her daughter Heidi Stemple and illustrator Brooks Dyer, has created a bedtime book for everyone--or, at least for twelve wild animals and one quiescent little human.

Yolen's latest, Sleep, Black Bear, Sleep is a picture book which works on two different levels. As a subliminal sleepy-time story, it shows animals from black bear to toad sleeping, nodding, lolling, yawning, dozing, and snoring in a variety of cozy anthropomorphic jammies and bedclothes, snoozing on sofas, and resting on recliners, until the most energetic among us feels our eyelids drooping and hears our comforters calling. The final page shows a little girl with tousled blonde curls dreaming through a snowstorm with plush versions of the twelve featured animals snuggled all around her.

And even YOU, it's time for sleep,
So snuggle down and burrow deep.
The sheet and quilt will keep you warm
Through winter or through summer storm
Till you awaken in the morn.
Sleep, my little child, sleep.

On another level, however, the text conveys a subtle awareness of the varied ways animals practice hibernation, dormancy, or torpor, as such forms of deep sleep are known in scientific terms. For example, the gopher rests in a burrow, but rouses to "snack a little bit," since gophers are known to store winter food and wake occasionally to feed. Turtle "snoozes" in underground mud until spring sun warms his habitat enough to bring his ectothermic body back to an active state. Frog sleeps deeply at the bottom of a frozen stream without waking until spring, drawing oxygen from the cold water transdermally. Although the science lesson is not overt, this book offers great possibilities for discussion of the different ways animals use dormancy to adapt to winter habitats.

Sleep, black bear, sleep.
The hills are bare and steep.
You hibernate through winter's snow;
Your heart beats steady, strong, and slow.
You wait till spring to rise and go.
Sleep, black bear, sleep.

As always, Yolen (Caldecott author of Owl Moon) has a talent for flowing, rhyming text intelligently matched to her subject. Illustrator Brooks Dyer's drawings are soft and cozy when portraying the animals at rest, but each double-page spread also contains an icon of the animal's active phase (chipmunk's running sneakers or mouse planting a flag on a green-cheese moon). There's a lot more to learn and see here than just a cuddly, quick bedtime ditty. This one is a winner!