While You Sleep

As evening settles and a little girl drifts off under her mother's care, a team of night-time bunny helpers gets to work. Their job is to tidy and shine the landscape so it is ready for morning. Their chores are whimsical: they paint the flowers, dust off the butterflies, and charge up the rainbows.

Miki Sato builds this dreamscape from paper, textiles, and embroidery silk, so the scenes have depth and a richly textured, three-dimensional look. Each page offers plenty of small details to linger over.

Jennifer Maruno tells the story in rhyming couplets with a soft, lulling rhythm, and her verse celebrates the natural world. Together with the artwork, the text gives the book a dreamlike, enchanted feel suited to bedtime.