Here We Come!

Loosely rendered spreads washed in lush nighttime blues give elegance to this fanciful excursion that employs nonsense sounds, a readaloud romp through a nighttime world ordered by rhythm and rhyme. The full moon shines into a bedroom where a teddy bear and light-skinned child look at each other in happy anticipation. A page turn later, they venture out for a nighttime parade: “Here we come with a rum-pum-pum.// Wanna come?” A dog with a guitar, a bear with a fiddle, a brown-skinned child with bubble gum, and more join the procession one by one, Matthies’s rhyming lines stacking up, “The House That Jack Built”–style, until stormy weather (“a drip on a drum”) interrupts their fun. The outing may be over, but the scenes of the parade breaking up are, in Davenier’s hands, just as charming as the scenes in which it grows. Ages up to 8. (Mar.)