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In a Blue Room    by Jim Averbeck & Tricia Tusa Amazon.com order for
In a Blue Room
by Jim Averbeck
Order:  USA  Can
Harcourt, 2008 (2008)
Hardcover
* * *   Reviewed by Hilary Daninhirsch

There are so many bedtime stories out there, but there is always room for new and original ones, such as In a Blue Room. In this slim and easy-to-read book, a little girl can only go to sleep if her room is all blue. In the first scene, there is not one blue thing in the room, other than the blue quilt which Alice is using to bounce up and down on her bed. Her mother brings her some flowers, which are not blue, but Alice's mother encourages her to simply smell them.

Page after page, Alice's mother engages her other senses, and even though Alice is insisting on only blue things, she soon allows herself to be soothed to sleep by her mother. It is only after Alice is asleep that the soft moonlight streaming into the window turns everything else blue.

'Off goes the lamp and in comes the moon,
bathing everything in its pale blue light.
Blue flowers.
Blue tea.
Blue quilt.
Blue bells.
Blue moon.
And Alice, fast asleep ...
in a blue room.
'

This book is a good example of the illustrations being central to the story - it makes you want to climb right in and fall asleep under the blue-hued sky. I particularly loved the picture of Alice's house which seems to be sleeping on top of the earth.

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