Dark Sparkle Tea: And Other Bedtime Poems

In some ways, bedtime brings out the best of parent and child. I don't mean that it's always a time of quiet sharing and affection; anyone with kids knows it's often more like herding cats. At age four, my daughter Cassie would describe herself, with unconscious accuracy, as "still wild awake." But for all that, it's essentially a ritual of love and comfort-and all the goodness comes together when we read to our children before they sleep. That's why I wrote Dark-Sparkle Tea, and why I included poems to match all of a child's bedtime moods. Kids need, of course, a sense of safety and coziness; I remember how our son Nick, as a four-year-old, once woke up screaming, "Night is never-ending! Night is never-ending!" But children are also open, as always, to humor, curiosity, and wonder. Nick once asked me, "Dad, do you think there's such a thing as aliens- do you think they have such a thing as alien hamsters?" And kids inevitably want, of course, to be entertained; our son Seth once responded to a couple of lecture-like sentences of mine with, "Don't tell me again, Dad; my ears get stale." Sharp and sassy as they can be, though, they're also suckers for the lyrical when they're in the right mood-as Nick was when he wrote, "I wish the map you could jump into and return to the real world." Or when Cassie, wearing a party hat, announced herself as the "Queen Brave Rainbow Unicorn named Jennifer!" In these poems I promise you the riches of bedtime. I promise a rock-and-roll hamster and the royal land of dreams-snuggling up with a lovable lion and planning future adventures- a crazy sleepwalker and the ease of sleepy bees -affectionate skunks and a worthy watchdog-silliness-sleepiness-cricket song-and all of it sprinkled with moon and stars. And it's my fervent hope that neither your ears nor your child's will get stale.