By Katey Howes
A gentle, rhyming picture book that follows the wild animals slipping through a gap in the hedge on a small farm, from sunrise all the way to moonrise.
There's a gap in the hedge on a small farm, and all day long, one creature after another slips through it. In soft, rhyming verse, the book follows the parade of visitors, from first light through the warm middle of the day and on into evening and night, as the farm quietly comes alive around that one small opening. It builds the way a cumulative rhyme does, each animal adding to the last, until the whole day has passed.
This is a calm, lovely one for the end of the day. The rhyme rocks along at a bedtime pace, and Caldecott medalist Beth Krommes fills every spread with fine-lined scratchboard art you and your child can get lost in, spotting each animal as it comes through the gap. There's no plot to worry over and nothing to fear, just the quiet turning of a single day on a farm. For a young child who loves animals or a family that likes to wind down with something beautiful, it's a keeper.