“I don’t have naps. I have adventures. I don’t sleep in a bed. I ride in a Dream Boat.” So begins Vancouver author Dan Bar-el’s delicious journey into the reveries of children from all over the world.

Marco is whisked away in a boat made of reeds to the Andes, where the stars guide him to his grandparents’ village for dancing and feasting. Kaia’s cedar canoe flies her to Haida Gwaii for a potlatch, while Ivan’s mighty frigate sails past the Bear Spirits to the realm of Baba Yaga and the Firebird. From Babatúndé gliding along the waters of the Niger to Shenaz in her fishing boat being sprinkled with spray from Giant Ganesh’s trunk, these children all have their own vessels that take them away to lands of myth and memory.

This is a gorgeous bedtime book. Bar-el’s poetic prose sweeps the reader along on the swish of the water and the wind that vaults the boats aloft. The vignettes about each child are interspersed with pages in which children representing diverse cultures meet and play together in the air.

Kirsti Anne Wakelin’s rich, multi-layered illustrations convey both the spirit of adventure and the children’s sleepiness. Whisking the reader between cultures and across boundaries of night and day, earth and air, reality and fantasy, the pictures embody the interweaving of the characters’ stories. Words and pictures float together and, like the Dream Boats, “dock gently.”