Review Detail

Dream Train: Poems for Bedtime

Kids Fiction 511

Quiet Collection of Soothing Poems

March 11, 2023

Overall rating

3.5

Plot

3.0

Characters

3.0

Writing Style

4.0

Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)

4.0

This collection of original poems by Taylor are all loosely centered on nightime and retiring for the evening. From a girl whose idea of the future is brushing her teeth and turning in to more contemplative verses on the nature of twilight, the poems are sometimes practical ("We're Different", which has descriptions of different people and their jobs) and sometimes philosophical ("Asked By a Pillow" ponders how many things are in the world, and how many dreams are in a night). There are quite a number of poems, and if one were to read through the entire book at bedtime, I'm sure the listener would be in slumberland long before the final "The World is Busy"!

Good Points

Allepuz' mixed media illustrations have a soft, unfocused quality to them that is very dreamlike. Many of the pages have dark backgrounds, and there are a lot of grays, blues, and purple's in the color scheme. This lack of sharp edges is a rather soothing way to help encourage children to close their eyes rather than look into particular details of the illustrations.

Every family needs to have a collection of books about bedtime so that the right mood can be captured on the right night. Sometimes a book holds up to repeated readings, like Boynton's The Going to Bed Book, and others are good to dip into and read favorite parts. This is a great book to have on hand along with Hopkins' classic Night Wishes or Bushel and Peck's collection of classic Favorite Poems for Bedtime. If you've memorized Stevenson's Bed in Summer, you can whisper that to the children as you pull the covers up and kiss them goodnight.