Dream Star Stories

Sylvia Pantaleo is an assistant professor of education specializing in
children’s literature at Queen’s University and the co-author of
Learning with Literature in the Canadian Elementary Classroom.

Dream Star Stories is a collection of ten stories, three narrative
poems, and six stories with one or two stanzas of poetry about dreams
and stars. “The Dream Star Man,” the first story in the book,
explains how “dream stars” floated to the sky to avoid heavy rains
on earth. The Dream Star Man uses a tree to gather the dream stars from
the sky and then shakes the tree in children’s rooms so that the
magical stars drift all over. Another story in the collection,
“Cato’s Dream,” is about a cat who makes one of his dreams come
true and becomes a famous mouse-juggling feline in a circus.

Brightly colored, cartoonlike, framed illustrations accompany each
story or poem. Unfortunately, the topics and content of the stories and
poems, a rather prosaic writing style, and forced rhyming patterns in
the poems combine to create selections that fail to appeal and engage
readers. Not recommended.