Loosely rendered spreads washed in lush nighttime blues give elegance to this fanciful excursion that employs nonsense sounds, a readaloud romp through a nighttime world ordered by rhythm and rhyme. The full moon shines into a bedroom where a teddy bear and light-skinned child look at each other in happy anticipation. A page turn later, they venture out for a nighttime parade: "Here we come with a rum-pum-pum.// Wanna come?" A dog with a guitar, a bear with a fiddle, a brown-skinned child with bubble gum, and more join the procession one by one, Matthies's rhyming lines stacking up, "The House That Jack Built"--style, until stormy weather ("a drip on a drum") interrupts their fun. The outing may be over, but the scenes of the parade breaking up are, in Davenier's hands, just as charming as the scenes in which it grows. Ages up to 8. (Mar.)

Here is a book that begs to be read aloud at storytime -- read aloud, and shouted, and paraded. The rhyming cumulative text begins with a child heading outside at night with a companion teddy bear and a tin whistle: "Here we come with a rum-pum-pum. / Wanna come?" The invitation is addressed to a dog inside a doghouse at the side of the road, who then emerges on two legs playing a guitar: "Here we come with a rum-pum-pum / and a pick and a strum." The pattern continues with Little Lu in her pajamas (who joins them with a "swish-swish bum"), a violin-playing bear ("fiddle-dee, fiddle-dum"), a mouse on a kazoo ("zum-zum"), and more until there is a veritable parade of revelers...and until the newest sound is -- uh-oh! -- a drip on a drum. Just in time, they all take shelter under an enormous tree (though don't try this at home) as lightning strikes and the storm breaks. "Boom-boom-RUM-PUM!" From here the text reverses itself, dropping off participants as it unrolls, until finally it's just the child and teddy bear, "right back where / we started from." Davenier's watercolors in their nighttime hues capture all the excitement and movement of the impromptu music fest. Each double-page spread subtly introduces the next participant, much fun for observant viewers. A delight from start to finish -- perfectly paced, joyful, with just the right amount of tension and drama for the young audience, and wonderfully inclusive with its welcoming refrain: "Wanna come?" Martha V. Parravano March/April 2022 p.(c) Copyright 2022. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.