Game Day Goodnight! Goodnight, Football by Michael Dahl

THE BLEACHERS ARE FULL,
FOR A VERY GOOD REASON.

THE BIG GAME IS TONIGHT.
IT'S FOOTBALL SEASON!

Full of excitement, the fans stream into the stadium, bundled up for the autumn weather, with cushions and streamers and high hopes for the home team.

Cheerleaders shout and leap as the teams take the field, and the bands strike up their fight songs. The drama builds as the two teams line up for the first play.

And then the game begins.

THE RECEIVER BREAKS LOOSE
AND STANDS ALL ALONE....

REACHES UP, GRABS THE BALL...
... HE'S IN THE END ZONE!

It's all there--the quarterback's snap, the clash of the linemen, the scent of hot dogs and popcorn in the air, the celebration after the touchdown, and all the fun of the spectacle of football, from the kickoff to the final handshakes between winners and losers, in Michael Dahl's new Goodnight Football (Sports Illustrated Kids Bedtime Books) (Capstone Young Readers, 2017), as his young football fan enjoys his first game. And as the crowd exits the stadium, he remembers to bid all of it a good goodnight:

GOODNIGHT, BLEACHERS,
GOODNIGHT, FANS!

GOODNIGHT, FIELD
AND CONCESSION STANDS.

In most bedtime stories, children settle down with Teddy bears or toy trucks, but this young football fan falls off to sleep in his helmet, still holding on to his football, not long after that trademark moon rises over the goalposts. Dahl's rhyming verse catches all the pageantry of the football game for families who are football fans, making use of terms along the way to familiarize youngsters with the vocabulary of the game. As she did in Dahl's first sports bedtime tale, Goodnight Baseball (Sports Illustrated Kids Bedtime Books) (see review here), artist Christina Forshay's illustrations begin with endpapers of the gridiron and catch the movement, the colorful action, of the big game in soft autumnal tones that lead the listening child toward sleepytime in his own bed.