Goodnight Songs by Margaret Wise Brown

Goodnight Songs are a set of previously unpublished lullabies by Margaret Wise Brown with illustrations by twelve different illustrators. I knew six of the names and six I needed to investigate.  You already know I do enjoy books like this that bring together the work of different illustrators. 

Jonathan Bean; Carin Berger; Sophie Blackall; Linda Bleck; Renata Liwska; Christopher Silas Neal; Zachariah O'Hora; Eric Puybaret; Sean Qualls; Isabel Roxas; Melissa Sweet; and Dan Yaccarino. The cover illustration is by Isabel Roxas. You can see more of her books here. My fabourite pages are the ones by Eric Puybaret (from France) and Sophie Blackall.

Melissa Sweet

Watch this video to see and hear some of the illustrators and learn more about how this book came to be discovered and published. 

Listen to a two-minute audio sample here of the first lullaby - The Noon Balloon. There are links here to all of the songs (but this site does have advertisements). You can see all the pages from Goodnight Songs here. 

As for the poetry, it feels wonderfully, authentically Margaret Wise Brown. Though full of fanciful ideas and imagery, Brown’s work never gets to be “too much” for kids to digest. Her specialty has always been simple words and phrases, rocking repetition, and a youthful perspective—a kid’s-eye view, so to speak. These new poems are no different and employ the familiar language and lilt of her classics. Barnes and Noble

"One can hope to make a child laugh or feel clear and happy-headed as he follows the simple rhythm to its logical end. It can jog him with the unexpected and comfort him with the familiar, lift him for a few minutes from his own problems of shoelaces that won't tie, and busy parents and mysterious clock time, into the world of a bug or a bear or a bee or a boy living in the timeless world of a story." Margaret Wise Brown

Goodnight Songs was published in 2014 so it is now sadly out of print but if you can find a copy and you have a music teacher in your school you should share this book which comes with a CD so you can hear and sing each of the twelve lullabies.