The Midnight Babies

May 15, 2023
Wakeful babes, unite and toddle on! The nefarious forces of sleep are working hard to entice babies into a deep slumber, but light-skinned Wide-Awake Baby is determined to overcome them. She's assembled a stalwart army of pajama-clad Midnight Babies to ensure they remain awake all night. Armed with noisemakers, this defiant band makes its cacophonous way through enemy lines. The terrain is treacherous: There's the Forest of Nightlights, the Sea of Stories, the Garden of Lullabies, the Rockabye River, and, finally, the perilous shores of Nodoff with its menacing Army of Teddies. Unsurprisingly, one baby after another succumbs to temptation along the way and slips into blissful snoozing until Wide-Awake Baby is alone. Finally, even she falls deeply asleep, giving in to the ever so heavenly Cuddle. She finds herself in the land of Sleep, surrounded by frolicking Midnight Babies, enjoying games and treats galore; they're all unable to remember why they tried so hard not to go there. Next morning, Wide-Awake Baby, having been duped, determines to put up resistance again that very night. This clever, tongue-in-cheek story will be best appreciated by parents familiar with sleep-delaying tactics. Very small tots may not pick up on the tricky niceties--yet. The dynamic, cartoony pencil-and-charcoal illustrations, colored digitally, are lively and imaginative and feature lots of endearing, wide-eyed, racially diverse infants. (This book was reviewed digitally.) Fun but probably not the best book to read aloud to little ones immediately before bedtime. (Picture book. 2-5)

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June 1, 2023
Preschool-Kindergarten At midnight, Wide-Awake Baby leads a group of insomniac babies through the Forest of Nightlights, the Garden of Lullabies, and Rockabye River. Although Wide-Awake Baby urges them to stay awake, one by one the babies succumb to the allure of Sleep. When Wide-Awake Baby herself finally falls asleep, she is greeted by her baby friends, who are playing in the land of Sleep. It is a wonderful place filled with the babies' favorite things, and none of them can remember why they were fighting so hard not to go. Yet when she wakes up the next morning feeling tricked (albeit well rested), Wide-Awake Baby plans to march again at midnight. The cartoon-like illustrations, done in pencils and charcoal and colored digitally, have an aesthetic reminiscent of the original Nickelodeon TV show Rugrats. The babies' perpetually wide-open eyes appear slightly zombie-like at times, and the Army of Teddies they encounter on the shores of Nodoff are more the stuff of nightmares than comfort. A bedtime story for toddlers who stalwartly resist bedtime.

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