Night Songs

At ``moontime,'' a mother asks her child to ``lie still. / Listen'' for the ``night songs.'' Beginning with the sounds of the countryside, where ``crickets chirp / their scratchy meadow melody,'' the poem describes a storm on the prairie, the ``chatter, / claw, / and squeak / deep in the forest,'' the ``raucous tune'' of the city, the ``tingling bells'' that ``croon a love song / to gulls / listening in the harbor,'' the coconut palms that ``conduct / the island's solo,'' and finally returns to the child's house where the baby, ``warm breath sighing softly . . . drifts into dreams.'' Miranda's vibrant and varied ink and paper collages are beautifully designed, with complicated textures and vivid colors; and the lyrical language combines fresh imagery with lullaby rhythms that soothe and comfort. Nonetheless, the abstract illustrations and verbiage may sometimes perplex the preschoolers for whom the book is intended, as when the coyotes in the desert seem pasted atop textured mountains as their ``haunting lyrics echo in the canyon.'' Ages 1-6. (Mar.)