Hush! A Thai Lullaby

Cute- good read aloud, but may get a little redundant (kind of the point though...) Nice pictures- lots of color.

A beautiful picture book based on a mother, baby, and many fun animals in a small Thai village. The illustrations in this book give such a warm, three-dimensional feeling. A truly beautiful book all around.

This story in rhyme and song is the story of a Thai mother and her baby son. It is a lullaby in which the mother asks a variety of animals including a lizard, monkey, and water buffalo to be quiet so that her baby can sleep.

This is a lullaby to a mother’s sleeping baby in Thailand. She asks animals like a lizard, cat, and an elephant to be quiet and not weep so the baby can sleep.

This book reminds me of when I babysit, trying to keep everything quiet and still, including the family dog, so the baby can sleep.

Do a

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unit on Thailand or culture and everyone bring in a stuffed animal or draw a picture of an animal that they would see in their everyday lives that is in the country they were born in. So if you have children born in a different country or state, they could share the animals that live around them. Another activity is the class could pick out the adjectives or describing words in the book, and then make a list of describing words for the animal they brought. The author used an adjective that described each animal, so this would be a good exercise for them to learn the parts of speech.

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I love the rhythm of this book! It has a repeated patterned sentence and I love it! It rolls right off your tongue...easily, and beautifully! The pictures are beautiful as well and each of the pictures you can try to find the little baby who is supposed to be sleeping.

Summary: This book is about a mother who is trying to keep her baby from being woken up. She talks to all sorts of animals such as lizards pigs and monkeys to try to keep them quiet. In the end everyone is asleep but the baby.
Personal Reaction:The repetition would be great to keep the younger

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childrens attention. The pictures were great and showed the words well.
Classroom extentions: This book could be used to talk about a variety of animal's sounds and looks. It could also be used in a unit about culture.

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Genre: Folktales
Review: This is a good example of a folktale because it a Thai lullaby that may be similar to some lullabies popular in other cultures.
Media: watercolor, color pencil

This book has a lot of rhythm! This mom is trying to get her baby to sleep, so she is talking to all sorts of animals to keep quiet so the baby can drift off. In the end the baby is the only one not sleeping. It is a colorful book with great illustrations.

This book is a fun read; the repetition, rhythm, and predictability (of both words and ending) are familiar for all readers. The illustrations are what make this book magical. Aside from creating the setting--an earthy hut in the middle of luscious Thailand where animals stir--the illustrations

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provide a feeling of depth to every page and a counter-story to the text. It is beautiful and simply heartwarming.

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Used for Animal Antics Baby Storytime 9/14/12. Worked pretty well - particularly when I encouraged the parents to act out the animal noises and actions with their babies. I did however skip a few pages (the duck, the monkey and the water buffalo) to make the length more appropriate. The text

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highlights the Thai words for animal noises and follows a pattern for each animal verse. I'd love to know if there's an actual melody floating around for this somewhere.

For older readers, the illustrations by Holly Meade are really the highlight here. Done with cut paper collage and ink, Meade's illustrations bring the Thai setting to life in earthy colors dominated by browns, oranges and reds. I love the textured look that the cut paper collages allow and I want to reach out and touch Meade's creations. Close observers will also notice that as Mama gets more and more distracted trying to hush the many animals, baby makes a break for it - a story told entirely through the illustrations. By the monkey spread, baby is swinging from the porch railings, but he makes it back to his hammock before Mama ever knows. We end with all the animals asleep and Mama falling into what seems to be an exhausted slumber while baby is contentedly wide awake.

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This lullaby poem is very sweet and insightful of the Thai culture. The animals in the story make noises that we aren't used to hearing. The frog makes the noise "op-op op-op" in comparison to the American culture's "ribbit" frog noise. While some of the animals used in the poem are similar to

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everyday animals here, there are some like the water buffalo and elephant that children in America don't see very often. The story is fun and makes a very obvious rhythm that children will be able to catch onto quickly, as well catch on to the repetition used.

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Hush! A Thai Lullaby is an multicultural book that describes a universal care a mother has for her baby. It takes a unique path through the mothers imagination, as the story is told. The illustrations are realistic because each animal is displayed true to reality. As the author goes further into

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the story the illustrations reveal what the baby is doing while the mom is trying to keep things quiet. This gave the story a comical feel to it as well, which helps make the story enjoyable to young grades (k-2nd). Furthermore, the illustrations and the flow of the story helped you as the reader to try and predict what will happen next.

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I really enjoyed this story because it was soothing and relaxing. The story made me fall into it and feel like I was actually being put to sleep. The illustrations depicted the story perfectly. The story reaches across generations as well as cultures because of the love of the mother for her baby.

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Great read!

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This is an odd book about a mother trying to put her son to bed but the animals around their house keep making too much noise. She tells all of the animals to hush multiple times until they all quiet down. At this point, her son wakes up and she falls asleep. I would possibly use this in a

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classroom in preschool right before nap time to make the children sleepy, but I wouldn't go any earlier than this. genre: myth, folktale

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Wonderful book for bedtime!. I love the poem, with the soft rhythm of lullabies but presenting an expectation from one page to the next to find out what is the animal that is making the noise/sound that will wake up the baby who is sleeping. At the very end, even after the mom is asleep, we find

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out that the baby is wide awake! Illustrations are graphic and colorful, with diverse textures from cut papers. The expressiveness of the mom character makes her alive and so believable! Ink is used in few places to add accents to the illustrations.

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Summary
The rhyming, repeating, story of a Thai mother "Hushes" all different animals that make a sound starting from the smallest (mosquito) to the largest (elephant). As the mother moves around her hut, she tells each of the animals she encounters to hush but in the background the author shows the

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baby to be awake. At night time all are asleep except for baby who is wide awake.

Reaction
The book uses a rhyming approach to tell the lullaby. Excellent to see how another culture lives and sleeps. Also the book describes many of the animal noises or sounds they make.

Classroom extension

1. I would use this book to describe the Thai culture and living
2. I would use this book to introduce animal sounds that they make
3. This book could be used to describe what a lullaby is and have the children get in groups to write a lullaby

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Caldecort Honor Book.

"A lullaby which asks animals such as a lizard, monkey, and water buffalo to be quiet and not disturb the sleeping baby."
book cover

Minfong Ho grew up in Thailand which was her inspiration for this book.

Holly Meade is an award winning illustrator who deviated from her usual

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style for this book because she was inspired by Thai art forms.

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Hush is a lyrical story, a Thai lullaby told in verse. Each page is repetitious, with a new animal making a noise that will wake the baby. The baby's mother talks to the animals, such as this exchange with a frog, "Green frog, green frog, don't come leaping. Can't you see that Baby's sleeping?

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Green frog, green frog, don't you cry, my baby's sleeping right nearby. Hush! Who's that sniffling in the sty?" Turning the page we discover a pig making noise and the repetition continues. The book ends with the forest quiet and the mother asleep, and then we turn the page and see the baby, wide awake and smiling. Winner of the Caldecott Honor in 1997. Holly Meade was the illustrator.

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A well-deserved Caldecott Honor book, this is a story from Thailand. Rhyming phrases implore the animals to please be quiet because baby is asleep. While the phrases are repeated during each two-page spread, the animals vary. At the end of the book, we learn that the baby is wide awake!