Buenas noches, Papito Dios (Goodnight, Papito Dios) Book

"Papá, I don't want to go to sleep. I'm scared."

Everyone knows that the trick to putting children to bed is creating a bedtime routine, and in this new children's story from Victor Villaseñor, he recreates his own family's bedtime tradition.

Papá tells his son that every night when he was a boy, his mother would sing him to sleep with the turtledove song. "Coo-coo-roo-coo-coooo," he sings, and tells the little boy about his very own Guardian Angel who will take him through the night sky to be reunited with God, or Papito Dios. "Then in the morning, you'll come back refreshed, rested, and powerful as the wind."

As Papá sings the turtledove song to his son, he reminds the child that Mamá loves him, the dog and the cat love him, and his brothers and sisters love him too. Even the trees and grass and the flowers that dance in the wind love him. Gradually, the boy drifts off to sleep, feeling safe and warm in God's love and dreaming of the day when he will sing the turtledove song to his own children.

School Library Journal

PreS-Gr 2- A father sits at the bedside of his child who is afraid to sleep and tells the youngster about a lullaby his mother used to sing to him. According to "the turtledove song," when you go to sleep "your Guardian Angel will come to you in your dreams and take you...up to Heaven to reunite you with Papito Dios , your Heavenly Father." When you return, you will feel "refreshed, rested, and as powerful as the wind." A note at the book's conclusion indicates that the author based the story on his own experiences. Unfortunately, the text consists of a tedious dialogue that pretty much says the same thing on every page: "My mother sang me a lullaby when I was a little boy...." In Ramírez's folk-art illustrations, the bold thick lines and stylized portrayal of the characters do not convey the sense of life and rebirth that is clearly Villaseñor's intention. More problematic is the fact that there is really no story here. The wordy text when compounded bilingually creates an almost insoluble design problem and the pages are often cluttered. The lullaby is conveyed through the dialogue only and neither lyrics nor music is included. A disappointing effort.-Tim Wadham, Maricopa County Library District, Phoenix, AZ