There are few lovelier ways for a mom to put her child to bed than with a lullaby. Sean Qualls has taken Langston Hughes’s classic poem Lullaby (For a Black Mother) (Harcourt, $16.99) and brought it to life with sweet pastel illustrations. As bedtime draws closer, the pictures go from scenes of mother and baby playing in the sunlight, to the baby sliding across the night sky on music note bar lines, to both of them curled up asleep in a rocking chair. Hughes’s poem itself is both accessible and lyrical, and this edition is sure to be treasured as a nighttime family read-out-loud. Ages newborn-4. AJK
Everyone who has a cat at home knows that felines have no trouble expressing themselves; the only think they can’t do is speak. Mother-daughter team Patricia Maclachlan and Emily MacLachlan Charest lend them a voice in the delightful collection Cat Talk (Katherine Tegen, $17.99). Each poem is written from a different cat’s point of view: Tough Tom relates the love he found after a life on the street, while Tuck describes his penchant for waking up his humans by licking their toes. Barry Moser’s watercolors portray the dignity, beauty, and utter goofiness that make cats such treasured companions. Ages 5-10. JLM
