Stop Snoring, Bernard!

Bernard is a sweet, fuzzy fellow who sails around belly-up in his zoo's otter pool, but he snores during naptime—"Snore somewhere else, Bernard," says his fellow otter, Grumpy Giles—and he can't find a place to sleep that doesn't disturb his zoo mates. Gentle text and a low-key story line allow debut talent OHora to put lots of energy into his spreads. Half-naïf, half-funky acrylic paintings look a lot like woodblock prints; forms are simple, figures are cheerfully hatched and outlined with big black lines, and squared-off letters appear in big speech balloons. OHora has plenty of good ideas about how to use space. When Bernard tries sleeping in the zoo fountain, the giraffes who tell Bernard to stop snoring have necks so long that they exit the top of the page and re-enter on the opposite page. And when a huge alligator leaps out of the lake Bernard's sleeping in with a "STOP SNORING, BERNARD!" his open mouth, the mouths and tails of smaller alligators behind him, and Bernard's waving arms and legs set up a lovely visual rhythm. A promising debut. Ages 3–7. (Apr.)