Renée Treml, Sleep Tight Playpup, Puffin Books Scholastic Australia, February 2019, 32 pp., RRP $19.99 (hbk), ISBN 978014378997
Much acclaimed author/illustrator of numerous Australian baby animal books, Treml explores a child’s fear of the dark through the experiences of Platypup and his mother. This nocturnal young platypus wakes up scared and alone down in his burrow. “I saw a shadow. Heard it move”. His mother’s comforting words are not enough to reassure, so she leads him out into the starlit bush to the very place of his fears. But here, to her gentle words and with time to put names to those jumbled sounds and shapes, he begins to understand that the world is recognisably the same with or without the daytime sun. A quiet calming book to soothe night fears as the reader learns about the habitat of one of Australia’s most loved creatures. Beautifully soft glowing background colours surround the pair etched in detailed scraperboard line, each fine hair delicately drawn in reversed out white on black.
Reviewed by Liz Anelli
