by Moe Zilla

Created on: May 23, 2009

The moon smiles on the cover, and all of the book's illustrations are friendly and bright. "Sleep Tight, Little Buckaroo" says the cheerful subtitle, while the book's first page shows a smiling boy on an orange hillside, walking to his valley home at sunset. "Cowboy Dreams" celebrates the west, and the imagined joys of friendly ranchers who work outdoors. But it all takes place as a free-flowing poem, describing scenes and memories from the mind of a little boy.

The boy is obviously a denim-clad cowboy, wearing boots, a red handkerchief, and a tall cowboy hat. But while the book will describe cowboy life, it will do it in the form of a lullaby. His mother's waiting for him, and an unseen narrator whispers "Come along, you little cowpoke, time to turn in for the night." And by the second page, he's no longer strolling with his lariat over his shoulder - he's hanging his hat on his bedpost and climbing into bed.

"There's a whippoorwill a callin' as the dusk turns into dark. Shhhhhh..."

It rhymes beautifully, and there's beautiful two-page pictures for every four lines. The narrator asks "Can you hear the river murmur cross the valley deep and green?" and the illustrator supplies the valley, adding a silvery light as the wind whistles through its trees. And when the narrator imagines prairie foxes and owls rising under the moon, the illustrator tucks them into a soft blue background, lit by the smiling moon.

Kathi Appelt is a fan of the old west, according to the book's jacket, and she "grew up reading the novels of Zane grey and Louis L'Amour." But she also listened to Roy Rogers, and the book has the gentle feel of acoustic songs like "Tumbling Tumbleweeds." ("Your palomino hears the song. He shakes his silky head. La Lune dusts his golden coat with sparkling silver thread...")

There's no story, just a peaceful poem and a pretty set of illustrations. The boy brushes his pony's coat. A camp of cowboys sing a campfire song. Even the bears in the constellations "blink their eyes" at the sleepy tunes, while stars dance above the lair of a coyote far away. And the smiling moon appears again and again, looking down on the creatures in the night.

"She'll keep the night watch company, as the evening rolls on by..." Appelt writes. And the book's friendly message becomes clear in the book's last pages. ("Close your eyes now, li'l pardner, lasso up those cowboy dreams.") A magical illustration shows swirling silver smoke carrying the boy's dreams across the moon - and they're dreams of a smiling cowboy on a horse, lassoing a cow in the sky.

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