Tell Me What to Dream About

Two sisters lie side by side in their beds, wreathed in the blue light of nightfall. “Tell me what to dream about or I won’t be able to fall asleep,” the younger sister begs. The older sister obliges with a series of storybook images—eating “teeny-tiny waffles with teeny-tiny animals,” being a giant who carries singing creatures in her pockets, riding on clouds like horses through the sky. The younger sister, a pessimist, rejects them all. The humor lies in the way Potter’s (Beatrice Spells Some Lulus and Learns to Write a Letter) paintings seesaw between beguiling images of the older sister’s fancies (“Everyone lives in tree houses.... There are swings everywhere, and you can swing from one tree house to another to visit your friends”) and the same visions filtered through the younger sister’s gloom, in which pigs gallop across waffles and rainstorms ruin rides through the clouds. While the pacing is a series of bumps and starts as fancies are proffered and dismissed, the sisters’ bickering will be instantly recognizable. And Potter’s dream worlds, a feast of beloved fantasy elements, will lure readers back for more. Ages 3–7. (Apr.)