Night Night, Sleep Tight

Night Night, Sleep Tight

It's amazing how many picture books there are on the subject of bedtime. I just took a quick browse through my child's bookcase, and found at least twenty picture books that are either blatant bedtime promotion, or at least feature the protagonist all tucked in for the night and ready for peaceful slumber on the last page.

It turns out that lots of the classics--Madeline, Eloise, Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Day, Make Way for Ducklings, Harold and the Purple Crayon, and More More More Said the Baby, among many others—more or less end with "…and then they all went to bed."

You'd think sleep would be the least dramatic of topics, but ask any parent of young insomniacs: it is chock-full of tension and excitement. Like my fellow Scholastic parent-blogger Catherine, I have a sleep-resistant child, and we're not so much with the consistent nighttime routines. Many's the time I've started out the evening full of energy and resolutions to get things done, only to find myself wrung out and exhausted by the time I've wrangled my kid into bed.

The last few weeks have featured especially late nights, as summer heat and exciting vacation events and visitors have wreaked havoc on whatever flimsy bedtime rules we once had. This week my daughter has summer camp, and while it's probably good for her to get used to having to be somewhere in the mornings again, the exhaustion and grumpiness is taking its toll on all of us.

Well, at least we usually are able to fit a nice cozy read-aloud session in there at night between the tooth-brushing struggles and the post-lights-out "why are you still up?/okay but just one glass of water" exchanges. Now that my daughter's reading on her own, she usually gets some solo time to read in bed before the lights go out, too. (I've even been known to look the other way when encountering some surreptitious flashlight-reading.)

One of our favorites was, and still is, Peggy Rathmann's Ten Minutes Till Bedtime, in which a troupe of hamsters invades a young boy's house and enacts the fantasy of bedtime resisters everywhere by partying it up until the very last minute. Another one I've always liked is Tucking Mommy In, by Morag Loh, which is more of a sleepy parent's fantasy (and is out of print, mores' the pity): when Mommy conks out while putting her two little girls to bed, they take things into their own hands and tuck her in instead. I used to read that to my daughter in hopes that she'd follow suit, and occasionally it even worked.

There are more excellent bedtime-book suggestions on Scholastic's Best Bedtime Stories for Babies and Toddlers booklist. Several of them were in heavy rotation during my child's own preschool years, with dubious results as sleepytime propaganda. But they're pretty swell read-alouds anyway. If they also convince your child to actually close his or her eyes and snooze, you're one lucky, lucky parent.

August 20, 2008

Comments

[Alkelda the Gleeful]

You may appreciate this: years ago, when I worked at a daycare center, I pulled out Half a Moon and One Whole Star to read to my favorite girl. She said, "I don't want that one."

"Why not?" I asked.

She replied, "All it says is [with inflected droney, droopy voice] Go to sleep, go to sleep!"

While not a sleepy book per se, one of my favorites is What Shall We Do With the Boo-Hoo Baby?,which has all the animals piled up asleep by the end and the baby wide awake.

[catherine]

We LOVE 10 Minutes Till Bedtime too! We are still finding new things in the pictures, 5 years later.

I'd forgotten about Boo-Hoo Baby, too--another good one.

[Emily Joffrion]

Hi Els,

This post brings back so many memories of my favorite bedtime books as a little girl. I loved "Beast in the Bathtub" which was about a kid getting ready for bed with a gigantic, green beast who he instructed on the routine. I loved it! Maybe you'd like to add that to your library (if it's still around). I am an editor for a site called toddl3r.com, which aggregates great kid content from all over the web. I'd love to be featured on your blogroll! Feel free to contact me at emily@stagetwoconsulting.com. Thanks and good luck keeping our kids reading!

Emily