Bedtime stories about space.

On the edge of a sleepy town, a small silver rocket named Pip stood in a field of tall grass. Every evening Pip watched the sky turn from orange to purple to deep, soft blue.

"Tonight," Pip whispered, "I'll visit the moon." With a gentle hum, Pip rose above the rooftops, past the chimneys and the drowsy owls, until the town was a scatter of tiny golden lights below.

The stars came out one by one, like someone switching on lamps in a very large house. A comet drifted by and waved its long, glittering tail. "Going somewhere?" it asked. "To say goodnight to the moon," said Pip.

The moon was round and pale and smiling. "You came," it said. "I always light the way home for travelers." Pip rested for a while in the moon's silver glow, listening to the hush of space.

When Pip's engines grew sleepy, the moon laid a path of light all the way down to the field of tall grass. Pip floated home, landed softly, and folded its fins. Above, the moon kept watch, and everything was still.

High above the rooftops lived a very small star named Tilly. Every night the other stars shone with a slow, steady glow, but Tilly twinkled and blinked and fizzed, because she simply could not keep still.

"How do you all shine so softly?" she asked the moon one night. The moon smiled her wide, pale smile. "We breathe," she said. "Watch. In, and glow a little brighter. Out, and glow a little softer."

Tilly tried. In, and she glowed. Out, and she softened. In again, and out again. Far below, she could see a window with a night light, and a child tucked under a blanket, breathing in and out just the same.

"Look," whispered the moon. "Someone down there is shining softly too." Tilly watched the little window and breathed along with it. Her fizzing slowed to a twinkle, and her twinkle slowed to a glow.

Soon Tilly was shining as gently as all the others, a warm, quiet light above the sleeping town. The moon tucked a wisp of cloud around her like a blanket, and the whole sky rested together.

On the windowsill of a small bedroom sat a teddy bear in a knitted astronaut helmet. His name was Barnaby, and every night, when the light went off, he went on a very quiet adventure.

Barnaby climbed into a rocket made from a cardboard tube, with a sock for a sail. He counted down in a whisper, "Five, four, three, two, one," and floated up through the open window into the soft dark.

He drifted past a sleepy satellite that blinked hello, and past a slow cloud shaped like a sheep. The moon came closer and closer, until Barnaby could see its gentle gray hills and its round, quiet craters.

He went all the way around the moon once, slowly, the way you might walk around a garden in the evening. On the far side the stars were so bright and so close that he could almost touch them.

Then Barnaby turned his little rocket toward home. He floated back through the window, climbed onto the pillow and settled beside the child who was already fast asleep. "Same time tomorrow," he whispered to the moon, and closed his button eyes.