Color Brings Comfort to Bedtime in Imaginative Picture Book That Will Help with the Scariness of the Dark

A lot of parents will want to add this delightful picture book and story to their bedtime routine with young children. Nicola Winstanley's A Bedtime Yarn will inspire all to find comfort in surprising and familiar objects in order to help children feel safe in their beds alone at night.

Frankie is a little bear that has trouble falling asleep because he feels alone in the dark every night. He is afraid of the dark! All kinds of things could be lurking and he definitely doesn't like to be alone in his bed. Mom enjoys the hobby of knitting and Frankie knows that the balls of yarn are part of his mom's life. He can hear her knitting needles clicking together each night as he tries to fall asleep. Mom decides to give a ball of yarn to Frankie each night to hold as he falls asleep. The colored balls of yarn bring comfort in the dark. Frankie receives a different color of the yarn ball each night. The colors are awesome and he imagines all sorts of things that are the same color of the ball of yarn. Blue, green, orange, and yellow balls of yarn all have a different story in Frankie's dreams. The brown ball of yarn brings a special surprise to a dream. Frankie's dreams are filled with colors every night and the dark is not so scary anymore. Frankie's mom has a big surprise at the end of the story. Frankie must be ready to give up his last ball of yarn in order to receive the big surprise. Mom gives him one last invisible ball of yarn and Frankie wakes up the next morning to his big surprise. All of the colors come together to make the big surprise.

Winstanley writes with delightful simplicity and conveys the message that comfort can be found in simple things. Olivia Chin Mueller contributes her talent as an illustrator with gorgeous colors that fill each page.

A Bedtime Yarn was published by Tundra Books, a division of Penguin/Random House Young Readers. It is recommended for ages 3-7 and has an ISBN of 9781101918081.

Nicola Winstanley's A Bedtime Yarn is a delightful picture book to use when introducing the world of colors to young readers. I often used books like this one to explore colors with my students in my early childhood classrooms. Frankie, the little bear, is also a fun character that will inspire young children to use their imagination when exploring colors and storytelling. Each color has a story in Frankie's dreams as he falls asleep each night with a colored ball of yarn. Blue is his favorite color but the green, yellow, orange, and brown each have their own story in his dreams.

*Read A Bedtime Yarn in a group story time session or at bedtime with your little one.

*Call attention to each color and and the story dream that Frankie creates for the color.

*Make a class chart of the students' favorite color and invite each child to think of objects that are that color.

*Have the children draw objects that represent their favorite color. Invite the children to tell stories with the objects that represent their favorite color.

*Explore colors with a prism. Have a good quality prism available for children to view colors through the prism. What colors do they see? Does the prism itself have a color? Call attention to Frankie's invisible last ball of yarn that has no color. The prism itself has no color.

*Have bottles of food coloring available to mix with milk in small dishes. The milk creates pastel colors as the food coloring mixes with the milk.

*Have small boxes and marbles available for marble painting. Provide a variety of colors of washable paint. Place a marble and small spoonfuls of paint in the box and roll the marble around to create a painting. Invite the children to tell a story about their painting just as Frankie had stories to tell about his colors in his dreams.

* Brainstorm with your students about their favorite object to fall asleep with. what brings comfort to them in their beds at night?