Goodnight, Rainbow Cats

“Who is asleep in the big white house?” Turning the pages of this larger-than-average board book, young readers follow along as twelve little cats, in a palette of colors that goes beyond your traditional rainbow, enter the white house one by one and fall asleep behind a cut out window just for them. Each page is almost identical to the last, as readers acknowledge the big white house, wish the previous cat goodnight, and greet a new cat with it’s own color and posture. Progress through the book is marked as additional windows filled with color appear in the great white house until at the end all windows beam with vibrant tones and the cut out is lifted to reveal all twelve cats sound asleep in as many positions as their are colors. While some may find the repetition comforting, more may find it downright boring as they turn page after page hoping for something exciting or novel and realize that nothing ever changes. With the use of twelve colors, Urio presses beyond the standard rainbow of colors but chooses fails to add much excitement with her choices.