Publisher's Weekly Review
A father successfully induces sleep in his reluctant child in this "beautiful and valuable bedtime book," said PW. Ages 2-6. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Close your eyes and you can be/ Sound asleep in an apple tree/ Or if you like/ on a ship at sea. . . ."" Marzollo's bedtime rhyme hums on, one line to a double page, suggesting more and more seductive scenes of soft comfort (what nodder could resist ""Imagine drowsy geese at dawn""?). Meanwhile Susan Jeffers mixes the images thus evoked with views of a father getting his little boy ready for bed. During the drying off after a bath, for example, the white towel gradually blends into a scene of ""woolly lambs on a lazy day."" Sometimes both words and pictures get too cuddly cute. The little boy apparently thinks so too, for while Daddy conjures up visions of him ""cuddled on a panda's chest,"" the child is performing all sorts of acrobatics to avoid being dumped into bed. Such resistance, of course, helps right the balance, and Jeffers (who is, alas, at her most saccharine on the cover) also provides a lovely vision of animals in the (yellow) apple tree, an amusing one of sleepy child and sleepy father in a treetop robin's nest (bed, easy chair, and all), and a dreamlike, drowsy one of those geese at dawn, framed by a trio of antlered deer. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.