Instead, I was a bit surprised at what I saw: hundreds of silly picture books about sheep or chickens or dragons who just couldn't get to sleep. Obviously, because there are so many of them, these bedtime books must be big sellers, making the bean-counting boys and girls running the publishing houses smile all the way to the bank.

And to top it off, these books were filled with rhyming verse — not the kind of poetry I was looking for, not the kind that makes the words float into the ear: well-chosen words that are the souls of a thousand ideas.

I was not having a good time. A father, two kids in tow and tired of shopping, plopped himself down on a display shelf right on top of one of my books! Pretty funny, really.

I continued looking while a young woman came and set her ice-perspiring drink on a bookshelf.

I shrugged and moved my hand across the shelves, going over the thin-spined books as though thumbing through a filing cabinet. I came across plenty of books that are wonderful examples of what I mean when I talk about the poetry of children's picture books. They're not part of this year's crop, but I'll name a few of them anyway: "The Little House" by Virginia Lee Burton; "Make Way for Ducklings" by Robert McCloskey; "Starry Messenger" by Peter Sis; "Olivia" by Ian Falconer; and several picture books by two of America's most lyrical writers, Ed Young and Allan Say, for whom, I might add, English is not their native language.

In these books, the words do not rhyme but have rhythm. Like the stanza breaks in a well-thought-out poem, the words are evenly spaced from page to page. Such "music" and "balance" are hard to achieve. They are elusive, stumbling blocks for all those who think writing for children is easy.

I keeping thumbing. I am down to the letter S. A book by Ntozake Shange catches my eye. Its title: "Ellington Was Not a Street." The bold illustrations by Kadir Nelson draw me in. I am soon transported back to a time when the author was a little girl, and her parents' house was the meeting place of men who had a profound effect on the lives of African-Americans: men like the historian William DuBois, the percussionist Ray Barretto, the trumpeter and composer Dizzy Gillespie and, of course, Duke Ellington.

In a little more than 150 words, the author reminds us that those now turned into giants were once flesh-and-bone men who dream-ed of changing the world. I read about the author: She is a poet and a playwright with numerous accolades. The text of the book originally was a poem entitled "Mood Indigo," published in 1983.

I am, frankly, a bit astounded. This book appears to be at the other end of the spectrum of what I was looking for. If the rhyming doggerel bedtime books are on one end, surely this book must be on the other. Its short nonrhyming lines are dense and rich. They hurt my brain because I know about very few of the people the poet mentions. Who says children's books have to be easy? Certainly the good ones, I tell myself, are those that challenge the child's mind — and possibly even the parent's.

At the back of the book, the editor has fortunately provided a short biography about each of the people mentioned. Armed with this new knowledge, I go back through the book. I allow myself to hear the music of the words. I float through the rooms brought to life by the pen and pastel of Kadir Nelson and wonder what it was like to be there in that house.