"Sweet Dreams'' consists of 42 original poems with bedtime, sleep, and dreaming as their central themes. The poems are traditional in form and follow rhyme and meter, done in in the fashion of Robert Louis Stevenson's century-old classic, A Child's Garden of Verses.
Topics include moonlit nights, snowy days, dreams of dinosaurs in the bedroom, annoyance at a Key West rooster crowing all night, what it would be like to wake up as a worm, the oddness of a fever ailment, gazing at autumn leaves from a gently rocking hammock, the comforting protection of an unseen guardian angel, and fancies like "The Softest Bed'' in which a child envisions himself curling up, wrapping himself in his warm, bushy tail, and sleeping like a fox.
Started when Telander himself was sick in a bed many years ago and had begun writing the poems in his head, this poetry collection spoken by the author is a work of caring for boys and girls who must make that ordinary yet complex and sometimes frightening transition from waking reality to the land of Nod.
Sweet Dreams will amuse, delight, intrigue, and above all soothe children of all ages before sleep. It's soothing for adults, too, since all of us do, indeed, sleep.
