Read, Read, Read, said the Baby: Goodnight, Rainbow Cats by Barbara Castro Urio

This looked very attractive, but no libraries in my consortium had it to preview, so I decided to take a chance and buy it. It’s a Spanish import and won the 2019 Bologna Ragazzi Award (I have no idea if that’s something really outstanding, or more like being on the bestseller lists).

The cover shows colorful cats, each a pastel swoosh of color with white eyes, rolling, playing, and stretching across the cover. A die-cut rectangle at the base middle of the book goes to the back page. On the first page, we see the die-cut is the door of a house, a simple bare outline of a block house with a chimney. One window shows red (this is the one flaw in the book - in my opinion, this is red-orange, heavy on the orange, and not really red at all). On the left side of the page, the text reads, “Who is asleep in the big white house? It’s Little Red Cat, resting up in her room! Goodnight, Little Red Cat. Now, here comes Little Green Cat. Where are you going, Little Green Cat?”

Turn the page, and a green window has been added - Little Green cat is resting in the big white house. The story continues through all the colors, from a simple yellow and brown, to light-blue, to crimson and lime-green. In the end, all 12 windows have a color and the last page shows the 12 cats curling across the inside of the house in just the right way that their colors shine through.

My only quibble with this is that some of the colors don’t seem quite right; this could be the result of the new publication or maybe it’s just a cultural thing. Otherwise, this story is perfect for what it does - put kids to sleep.

Verdict: This isn’t a storytime book; it’s a lovely, peaceful bedtime story and I can imagine reading it over and over with a little one to send them peacefully to sleep.

ISBN: 9781452182131; Published November 2019 by Chronicle; Purchased for the library