Book Description
for Naamah and the Ark at Night by Susan Campbell Bartoletti and Holly Meade
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
Susan Campbell Bartoletti’s lyrical lullaby imagines the creatures on Noah’s Ark being soothed by the singing of Naamah, Noah’s wife. “She sings and strokes their hair at night; / She sings a bedtime prayer at night. / She sings for moon to fill the night; / She sings for stars to thrill the night.” Bartoletti’s entrancing narrative is based on a ghazal, an Arabic poetic structure in which a pair of rhyming words in each couplet precedes the ending word, which is the same for every line in the poem. The transition from restlessness to ease described in the narrative is echoed in Holly Meade’s lovely collage illustrations spanning each page spread, which show animals and people on the Ark in Naamah’s care. An author’s note shares more on the origins of the story in Bartoletti’s imagination and the mysteries of Noah’s wife among scholars. Honor Book, 2012 Charlotte Zolotow Award (Ages 3–7)
CCBC Choices 2012. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2012. Used with permission.