Young readers have demonstrated a fondness for picture books that bid good night to familiar objects and places (moon, construction site, steam train). Well, it's high time for another gently rhyming bedtime bon voyage. In Goodnight School, from Catherine Bailey (Dinos Don't Meditate) and Cori Doerrfeld (The Rabbit Listened), the subject is familiar but presented in a wondrously peculiar light: a school emptied of people.
As young readers know, it's hard to do the bedtime wind-down alone. Fortunately, bike-riding, ponytailed Night Guard arrives just as "teachers wave goodbye./ Bus gives one last beep./ Worn out little school,/ needs to get some sleep." Night Guard proceeds to walk through the building, closing window shades, pushing in chairs, and so on, ensuring that everything is sleep-ready. But wait: Is that a tambourine she hears rattling in the music room? And what's that hat doing in the middle of the cafeteria floor? Night Guard finally discovers the source of these irregularities: the wee turtle shown escaping its cage in the opening endpapers doesn't feel like turning in for the night. What young reader can't relate?
Doerrfeld's art abounds with clearly defined shapes in invitingly soft--some might say soporific--colors. Objects are personified throughout, as in the school library, where the chairbacks appear to have eyes, giving the cutouts beneath them the look of smiling mouths. Adults who consider yawning kids the preferred outcome of reading Goodnight School aloud shouldn't be surprised if the illustrations, especially an engrossing aerial view of one floor of the building, make young readers perk right up. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author