Good Night, Baby Bear Book

Clever Mama Bear knows just how to help Baby Bear fall fast asleep for winter. Winter is coming and Mama Bear has found the perfect spot for hibernating. But Baby Bear doesn't want to go to sleep yet. First he wants a snack. Then he wants a drink. And now he wants the moon! What is loving, but very sleepy, Mama Bear to do? With a lot of ingenuity - and a little magic - Mama Bear produces just the right comforts to help her baby snuggle up and dream.

Frank Asch has created more than fifty books for children, including the Moonbear series; The Earth and I (Gulliver Green, 1994), an American Bookseller Pick of the Lists; and Sawgrass Poems: A View of the Everglades, with photographs by Ted Levin (Gulliver Green, 1996), which was selected for the John Burroughs List of Nature Books for Young Readers. Mr. Asch lives with his wife in Middletown Springs, Vermont.

Publishers Weekly

In this gentle, straightforward picture book, Mother Bear has a harder time than most parents getting her baby to sleep, as bedtime here means winter hibernation. The beleaguered mother fetches a snack and then a drink into the cave, but when Baby Bear says that he can't fall asleep without the moon, she is stumped--until her resourcefulness comes to the rescue. Baby Bear's realistic bit of grumbling only makes the book seem sweeter. Asch (Barnyard Lullaby; the Moonbear books) uses a soothing palette of browns and blues: the simple bear figures are darkly outlined, and the cave's background sponged to add texture and a touch of luminosity to the cavernous tones. The story is a welcome addition to the bedtime genre, one parents will be glad to have as a resource when it's time to get their own little ones to nod off. Ages 2-6. (Sept.)