City Lullaby by: Marilyn Singer

1. Bibliographic Data
Singer, Marilyn. City Lullaby. New York: Clarion Books, 2007.

2. Plot Summary
City Lullaby is charming book about the many noises in the city as a baby is sleeping in their stroller. Marilyn Singer uses numbers and counting to carry the story along. The reader starts with ten horns beeping, and ends the story with one bird tweeting. There are many sounds in the city that are very loud, but the baby continues sleep in the stroller. Finally, "one small bird, for goodness sake, Chirpity-chirps, ...and Baby's awake. This is a very cute story that allows the reader to count along with the many city noises that the baby sleeps to until the one chirping bird.

3. Critical Analysis
City Lullaby rhymes very smoothly with rhyming words at the end of each sentence. It is easy to read aloud, and to make a rhythm so that children can follow along. Carll Cneut provides illustrations that compliment the story. On each page there is a different city noise, and there is a picture that matches the noise. At the end of the story, the reader goes through all ten sounds again, and there is ten cars, nine phones, eight dogs, seven trash cans, and so on. The words and illustrations in this book help the young reader learn how to count from one to ten through a fun, happy story about about a baby being pushed through the city.

4. Awards and Review Excerpt(s)
*Booklist..."Singer writes in infectious, rhyming poetry that scans smoothly to a rapid beat, which is echoed in the busy, densely populated, color-saturated scenes of cars, buildings, and city dwellers, rushing, eating, and playing."
*Kirkus Reviews..."Cneut's full-bleed mixed-media paintings dispatch traditional perspective: Orange buildings lean, box-like yellow cabs careen and a multiethnic crowd works and plays, jammed up against the picture plane along with garbage cans, cell phones, pets and signs."

5. Connection
*There are many sounds in this book that children can act out. Have the children say or make the sound while going through the book to help them interact with the story.
*Have the children talk about sounds they hear when they walk through the city, grocery store, library, school, etc.
*Have the children make up ten sounds they hear around town, and to draw a picture that corresponds with that sound.

"City Lullaby." Childrens Literature Reviews. ezproxy.twu.edu:2130/cgi-bin/member/search (accessed October 14, 2010).