Goodnight, Butterfly

June 1, 2022
In the great green...(ahem) tree, there is a butterfly who learns about nocturnal life. Everyone's favorite frantic insect is back (The Very Impatient Caterpillar, 2019), this time trying to sleep. But a porcupine is loudly munching on their breakfast. Breakfast?! "I'm nocturnal," the spiky friend explains. "I know you're NOT a turtle," the protagonist retorts. Butterfly has a ton of questions. "Are you scared of the light?" (No.) "Ever seen a cow jumping over the moon?" (No.) "Can cows even jump?" Unable to sleep, Butterfly decides to be nocturnal, too. Porcupine tries to help Butterfly settle down, with little success. In a last-ditch effort to stave off sleep, Butterfly makes a long list of everything the new "BNFFs" ("Best Nocturnal Friends Forever") will do together. Porcupine is concerned. "I think we need to get you back to sleep." Employing the use of a few relaxation techniques, Butterfly is soon nodding off to dreamland. But it wouldn't be Burach's style without one more final, silly twist. Chatty dialogue in different colored speech bubbles amps up the wit, with Porcupine's measured answers exaggerating the butterfly's frenzied state. (This book was reviewed digitally.) Fun bedtime fare that's sure to have little ones nodding along before nodding off. (Picture book. 4-7)

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July 1, 2022

PreS-Gr 2-Awakened in the middle of the night, a hyperactive butterfly, aided by an eternally patient porcupine, launches a series of increasingly silly attempts to get back to sleep. Burach's mannered humor, stuffed with postmodern gags, winking references, and slapstick action beats, seem to be aimed at adults. The stylized illustrations, made with pencil, crayon, acrylic paint, and digital coloring, recall a self-consciously zany comic strip-an effect magnified by the choice to eschew narration entirely in favor of snappy back-and-forth dialogue in colored speech bubbles. The brief allusions to the phenomenon of nocturnality shoehorned in along the way contribute little to the atmosphere, as they are too slight to be informative and too dry to be funny. Unlike the antic pacing found in a Mo Willems's book, which creates a narrative arc and leads to a conclusion, this is frenetic without focus. VERDICT The irreverent humor and wacky visual aesthetic, while amusing enough, may fly over the heads of children.-Jonah Dragan

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