A Wild Lullaby
Jackie Morris and Cathy Fisher
Otter-Barry Books

In this beautiful bedtime story a mother sings a lullaby to her child. She describes the various ways in which wild creatures all over the world settle their little ones.

In the field, the red fox barks; in the sea the whales hang side by side with their young and it’s the waves that create a lullaby for the seal pup as it snuggles close to its parent. Safe in an ice cave, bear cubs curl within their mother’s paws, and curled close to their mother in the jungle, tiger cubs hear the song of the breeze moving the leaves, their mother’s purring and the whirring of the bush crickets.

High up in the treetops in a nest built of branches, osprey chicks will hear the adult telling of the long journey over land and sea they will one day undertake: ‘A lullaby / of movement / around the turning world.’

Having guided her foal to a sheltered spot on the mossy heathland a Mother pony ‘sings songs of wild wonder’, the snow leopard family in the high rocks, and the elephants on the open plains watch over their young.

After singing her song throughout the day, it’s time for the mother owl to wake up and take flight in search for food to sate the appetites of the owl children as all around ‘Night sounds sing, / across land, across sky,/ a wild, / beautiful / lullaby.’

Jackie Morris’s lyrical text together with Cathy Fisher’s amazingly realistic watercolour paintings of the various creatures convey a feeling of peace and gentleness all across our wild and wonderful world.