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Good Night, Laila Tov follows children on an outing with their parents to experience nature, plant trees, then return to the comfort of home after a long and busy day. After each activity ends, and the children move onto something else, they bid good night in English and Hebrew to nature’s splendor.
The surprise ending is that at the end of the day, it is not the children but the parents who are exhausted from the day out, and the children are the ones who do the tuck-in-at-night procedure and bid their parents “good night, laila tov.”
While the concept of the day coming to an end and the children bidding “good night, laila tov” to their environment and activities is calming and soothing; the full rhymes are overly basic and don’t provide rich or fresh perspective to the book:
“When we got home, the sky was black.
“The cat was happy, we’d come back.”
The illustrations, with their soothing earth tones and clear, simple lines, are effectively evocative, revealing the contrast between the children who are playing and relaxing in nature while their parents run around, getting things ready for the outing, setting up the tent, planting the trees and packing up at the end of the day’s events.
Though the overly simplistic rhyming leaves something to be desired, the story concept and subdued illustrations are fun and attractive. Three stars.
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Good Night, Laila Tov