By Rachel Field
One short bedtime prayer, said by a little girl over her own small world — her bed, her chair, her cup of milk, the people she loves, and children everywhere. It won the Caldecott Medal in 1945 and has been given at christenings ever since.
A little girl kneels at bedtime and blesses the whole of her small world, one thing at a time. Her bed, her chair, the milk in her cup, the toys on the floor, the friends who come to play, her mother and father, and at the end, children everywhere. That's the whole book — a gentle goodnight prayer said over the ordinary, beloved things of a child's day. Elizabeth Orton Jones's soft, glowing pictures won the Caldecott Medal in 1945. The words are short and plain, the kind you fall into a rhythm saying.
It's the book families give at a christening, and the child still has it, soft-cornered, when they're grown. It says the thing you most want to say over a sleeping child: that they're safe, that the small world around them is good, that the love reaches all the way out to children everywhere. The prayer is gentle and unhurried, and Elizabeth Orton Jones's warm, candle-lit pictures make it a lovely thing to hold. You'll find a lot of copies with a name and a date written inside the cover.