Jumbo's Lullaby

Laura Krauss Melmed grew up in New York City, where the library was one of her favorite places. I was always staggering home with giant armloads of books, she says, and I must have read every fairytale book there was. The red one, the blue one, the green one all of them.

Laura's first book, The Rainbabies, with illustrations by Jim LaMarche, was published to critical acclaim in 1992. Her second book, The First Song Ever Sung!, with illustrations by Ed Young was published in 1993. Since then Laura has gone on to write many other favorites, including I Love You as Much!; Little Oh!; This First Thanksgiving Day!; and Capital!, about her hometown of Washington, DC.

Melmed and Sorensen, previously paired for I Love You as Much, travel to Africa for this verse invitation to sleep. A mother elephant attempts to lull her little one to slumber by describing the other animals' dreams. From yawning ostriches and "lion cubs curled with their mother" to gazelles "settled on a stretch of mossy ground," Melmed ticks off a leisurely list of animals, punctuated with variations on the refrain "Shusha, shusha, little Jumbo." At first realistic, Melmed's images soon launch into flights of fancy: the dreams of lion cubs "turning into tawny hunters/ stalking through the rippling grass" follows with "great gorillas dream they're dancing/ where the blue bananas grow" and zebras "dream themselves in gorgeous colors/ anything but black and white." Sorensen dips his brush in the quieter shades of the SerengetiAmisty gray-blues, ochre, moss greenAfor realistic, nuanced animal portraits that reinforce the underlying theme of mother love. On each facing page, he then embroiders on the text's fantastical elements with scenes of gorillas dancing among discarded blue banana peels sporting flowers behind their ears and zebras with electric combinations of green-and-red or yellow-and-blue stripes. This is bedtime fare with an exotic flair. Ages 2-up. (Sept.)
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