Bedtime stories about airplanes.

Skye was a little passenger plane with white wings and a blue stripe along her side. All day she had flown back and forth between the islands, carrying people to visit their families. Now the sun was setting, and it was time for her last flight home.

She rose gently into the evening sky. Below, the sea turned gold and then pink. The clouds were soft and tinted orange, and Skye flew between them, smooth and steady, humming her engine song.

Inside, the passengers were sleepy. A baby had fallen asleep on her father's shoulder. An old man was looking out of the window, watching the islands glow. A girl was drawing a picture of the clouds.

Then Skye saw the little airport, with its runway lit up by two rows of lights, like a path made of stars. She lowered her wheels, slowed down and touched down so softly that the baby didn't even wake up.

When all the passengers had gone home, a man in a yellow jacket guided Skye into her hangar. He turned off her lights and patted her wing. "Good flying today, Skye," he said. The hangar doors slid closed, and the little plane rested in the quiet, dreaming of clouds.

Kip had a toy airport on his bedroom floor. It had a runway made of tape, a control tower made of a cereal box and five toy planes. All afternoon, the planes had been taking off and flying around the room.

"Bedtime in ten minutes," called Mom. Kip knew what that meant. "Attention, all planes," he said in his control-tower voice. "The airport is closing. Please come in to land."

The big red jet landed first, zooming down the runway. Then the little propeller plane, bumping a bit. Then the helicopter, straight down, whup-whup-whup. Then the two small jets, one after the other, very neatly.

Kip parked them all in a row beside the cereal-box tower, wing to wing. He put the helicopter on top of the tower, because that was its favorite spot. Then he switched off the little torch inside the tower. "Airport closed," he said. "Goodnight, planes."

Then Kip climbed into bed, which he called his hangar. Mom tucked him in. "Ready for landing?" she asked. "Landed," said Kip, and he closed his eyes. On the floor, the five planes sat quietly in their row, waiting for morning.

Mina and her dad were flying to visit Grandma. It was an evening flight, and Mina had the window seat. She pressed her nose to the little round window as the plane rose up, up, above the town.

Then they went right through the clouds, white and fluffy, and came out on top. Mina gasped. Above the clouds, the sky was clear and wide, and the clouds below looked like a big soft field of snow.

As the sun went down, the clouds changed color: pale yellow, then peach, then pink, then purple. Mina saw a cloud shaped like a rabbit and a cloud shaped like a whale. Dad saw one shaped like a teapot.

The engines hummed softly. The cabin lights went dim. Mina tucked her blanket around her and leaned her head on Dad's arm. Out of the window, the first star appeared above the clouds, very bright.

Mina was asleep when the plane landed, so gently she didn't feel it. She woke up just a little when Dad carried her out, and there was Grandma at the arrivals gate, with her arms open wide. "There's my girl," said Grandma. Mina smiled and fell straight back to sleep, on Grandma's shoulder this time.