Customer Reviews

The Babysitter Sings

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This very enchanting book about a babysitter's calming a little one offers soothing lullabies from Nigeria and some of the best pictures I've seen all year. Author Phillis Gershator (who lives in St. Thomas) teams with illustrator Melisande Potter (who resides in New York City and Jamaica) to create a beautiful synthesis of story and picture, narration and song. The author notes that they collected the "slumber-song images" collected from their native region, as well as Africa and Spain.

Through the window of a brightly painted house adorned with palm trees, tropical plants, green slat shutters, and a tiled roof, we see a babysitter holding a somewhat distraught young toddler. Ms. Gershator immediately identifies "Baby" with a passing bird: "Baby cheeps like a bird, and I know why. When mama and papa go out, Baby starts to cry." The kind babysitter explains their temporary absence in lilting songs.

Hush, little bird.
I'll sing you a song.
Do you want to know
Where Papa's gone?

Papa's gone fishing for fish in the sea
To bring home a fish
For Baby and me.

On the opposite page, Potter illustrates this song with an incredible array of soft but vivid colors. She imagine Daddy catching a beautiful giant golden fish from a turquoise sea splashing onto a lemon yellow beach, with purple hills bordering a lavender/green/blue sky. On the next page, the babysitter says that Mama gone to "buy bean cakes for Baby, so Baby won't cry, and we see a more closed-in picture of an outdoor bean cake seller. Potter varies this with her next picture of a wide open field, as the baby sitter seems to coax Baby not to wander off searching for Mommy and Daddy. The book presents the anxiety and worry of Baby, each time answering it with a song or a rhyme, and an accompanying picture that unfailingly adds color and warmth.

There is one discontinuity in the book, when toddler size Baby suddenly begins to look more baby sized. However, this change is barely noticeable, for the next "song" is about animals, and Ms. Potter draws a peaceful kingdom of a sleeping lion, a "cow who moos all day," and the ever present bird--a "dove who spreads her wings and flies away." Later, the babysitter whistles a visible wind of notes and birds above the baby in her lap, all against an almost magical azure background. The parents come home to their little one, who falls asleep with a toy rabbit in his arms. "Sleep will find you. Yes, it will." This lovely and sweet book is a wonderful discovery. The imaginative and distinctive pictures (ink and gouache on Strathmore watercolor paper), and reassuring, lightly abstract songs are almost certain to sooth and distract the concerns of any little one. One of the best books of the year.

My 4 y/o son and 2 y/o daughter love this book. We read it almost every night and they remember all the words.