Sweet Dreams, Supergirl

This is a children’s book from 2018 written by Michael Dahl and illustrated by Omar Lozano. This is a children’s bedtime storybook that seems to be part of a line of books from Capstone that also includes Bedtime for Batman, Good Morning Superman, and Be a Star Wonder Woman. A blurb in the front flap of the book gives a good explanation of the story to come:

A young Supergirl fan faces her most elusive adversary: sleep!

As darkness falls, a young girl attempts to catch some Z’s while DC Comics’ Supergirl tries to save the world. With heroic traits like bravery, patience, and persistence, they’ll turn sleepless nights into sweet success and sweet dreams.

The protagonist of the story stays unnamed throughout to allow any child to project themself onto. The protagonist has brown eyes and dark hair and wears a white Supergirl Shirt and blue skirt as her pajamas. The story is told across 28 pages, and maintains a structure where each page spread has a panel for Supergirl and a panel for the unnamed protagonist. Each panel gets a small line of text and each side seems to play off each other with Supergirl representing daytime and the protagonist representing nighttime. For example, one page spread has “For a hero, the day is breathless, nonstop action…” as Supergirl’s text and finishes with “…so night is time to relax and breathe easy.” On the side of the protagonist. In this example both half’s mention breathing and this dichotomy is consistent throughout giving the story a nice even pace and lets the protagonist sit equal to Supergirl. The story also helps show that some challenges that children may face – like darkness and a long exhausting day of play – are similar to Supergirl’s challenges – like Kryptonite and meteor showers. But even through all these difficulties, both Supergirl and the Protagonist are able to face their fears and soar off to face the day.

While staying pretty close to the costume Supergirl wore in Superman the Animated Series and the latter half of the Peter David Supergirl comic, the costume presented in Sweet Dreams Supergirl is a bit different. As opposed to the classic white crop top, the maid of might is instead wearing a full white t-shirt with an S symbol on it. In addition, the boots of the costume presented here are very simplified whereas in the other iterations that I mentioned before they are almost always shown as lace up boots. Also present in the story is the costume our protagonist wears that is heavily based on this story’s Supergirl. Her pajamas include a short sleeve white Supergirl t-shirt, a frilly blue skirt, and sometimes a red cape. Also underneath she has a long sleeve red pj shirt, red pj pants, and red and white sock. This under set of pajamas is shown in blue on the cover (not red) and absent in the final couple pages when she’s flying with Supergirl.

The story has a couple nods to the wider DC universe. Characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, Streaky, and Comet all show up alongside Supergirl in her sections and on the protagonist’s side we also get to see plush versions of Wonder Woman and Streaky as well as a duck and a unicorn. Supergirl’s side of the book also has a couple brief showings of Green Kryptonite and the Daily Planet.

This book is obviously not for adults and doesn’t feature any heavy subject matter. But what it set out to do I think it did wonderfully. This book shows that no matter how big or small, powered or not, you can be super and have heroic challenges that you face and overcome each and every day. The story is wonderfully told with soft visuals and a nicely paced dualistic narrative that will surely be fun for any young Supergirl fan.

That’s all for today, I hope you enjoyed. If you have any questions, suggestions, comments, or corrections, feel free to leave a comment or send an email to blogofsupergirl@gmail.com