Sweet Sleep! Baby Animals Take A Nap by Marsha Diane Arnold

Upside-down nap

Inside-pouch nap

How do baby mammals grab a few winks? Let us count the ways!

Baby foxes doze sweetly and safely, hidden inside the dens that their mother and father have dug for them.

Small sloths snooze tummy-to-tummy with Mommy, whereas baby emperor penguin chicks rest upright, just leaning against a parent. Baby sea otters snooze holding hands with Mom. Baby bottlenose dolphins sleep in the deep on Mama's back while she snatches a moment of slumber, too. But baby monkeys on their moms' backs snore away while she stays on the move.

Little koalas curl up to catnap in Mother's pouch, and of course it's a baby bat who hangs head-down, wrapped in a parent's wings.

And baby humans? They especially love to snuggle in someone's arms, in Marsha Diane Arnold's brand-new Baby Animals Take a Nap (Charlesbridge, 2017). Arnold's narration, with simple but sibilant wordsmithery soothes, while the illustrations of Phyllis Tildes, with their soft-framed natural backgrounds and furry-textured animal babies sleeping under the care of a parent make a snooze seem almost irresistible. This is a sweet and lovely little board book for the very youngest, just right for bedtime or naptime.

To Nap. Perchance to Dream: I Will Take A Nap by Mo Willems

"I AM TIRED.

AND CRANKY.

I WILL TAKE A NAP!"

Sensible Gerald the elephant has the grumpies. He also has droopy eyelids and bags under his eyes. He knows just what to do.

He unrolls his rest mat, grabs his blankie, cuddles up with his Knuffle Bunny, and closes his weary eyes, hoping for happy dreams, like one about his best friend, Piggie.

Enter Piggie. She pokes Gerald.

"GERALD!"

Gerald sits up, eyes still at half-mast, mumbling. What the---?

Stumblingly, he points out the obvious. He is trying to sleep because he is weary. He flops back on his mat with a PLOOP! Piggie is perturbed with her party-pooping buddy.

"NOW I AM CRANKY, TOO! VERY!

MAYBE I NEED A NAP, TOO!"

Piggie plops down, taking up a good part of Gerald's mat, to share the experience with her best friend. She settles down with her toy elephant. Soon the ZZZZs set in, but then.... so do her snores!

"SNORE!  SNURK!

Gerald's eyes fly open. No sleep for the weary, it seems.

"I AM NOT ENJOYING MY NAP, PIGGIE!"

But Piggie points out that Gerald is, too, sleeping.

"IF YOU ARE NOT NAPPING, HOW CAN I BE FLOATING?

AND HOW COME I HAVE A TURNIP HEAD?"

Even Gerald the sensible elephant can't argue with that logic.

It was all a dream, in Mo Willems' latest kid-pleasing Elephant and Piggie tale, I Will Take A Nap! (An Elephant and Piggie Book) (Hyperion Books, 2015). Illustrator Willems offers a hint when the dream sequence begins with a change of background color, but even if the reader misses that cue, it is humorously obvious that both of the best friends are sharing the same dream in this latest in the author-illustrator's three-time Geisel Award-winning beginning reader series. Willems just keeps on getting better and better, and Gerald and Piggie keep on exploring the varieties of ways to be friends in this incomparable series. A necessary read for nap-haters and nap-lovers under age six or seven, and a wryly sophisticated read-aloud for grown-ups, too.