A Visit to Sleep's House

Ominous midnight-blue skies and dark forests surround a white-gowned child as the narrator invites the reader to journey far away to the side of a mountain where ``drowsy Sleep lives in a cloud-covered house.'' All is quiet as ``you walk up Sleep's pathway'' where ``no owl calls out, `Who?' / and no dog barks under the moon.'' Succeeding creatures--wild animals, geese, cows--make no sound until she sees Sleep, a shadowed figure wearing a nightcap, ``lying on an old wooden bed'' beside yours, and you fall asleep listening to the river that ``whispers, Good night, good night.'' This imaginative concept provides a comfortingly different look at bedtime, while Mathis's soft-focus paintings feature unusual perspectives with many familiar animals along the route. Ages 3-7. (Oct.)