Product Description

This boy is not ready to go to sleep, so he revs up his little red car and drives away into a magical, softly-muted land filled with larger-than-life toys. But all the toys are too tired to play, and when the toy musicians play a lullaby, it puts the boy's car to sleep. How will he get home now? Luckily, someone is still awake, and she's on her way to pick the boy up and tuck him (finally!) into bed. This humorous, clever story is sure to become a bedtime favorite.

"The imaginary blends seamlessly with the real." -Booklist, starred review

Awards:

( Winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #547406 in Books
• Published on: 2000-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 32 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780140567717
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 2. As she did in The Bear under the Stairs (Dial, 1993), Cooper takes a gentle, wry look at a child's imagination. At bedtime, a young boy takes a fantasy trip in his little red car into a land filled with his stuffed animals and toys?all of which are larger than life. In the well-patterned, repetitive text, the child asks each toy to play with him; each replies in its own way that it's not the right time for playing: "Nighttime is for resting, not racing," says the train. As the sun goes down, the youngster journeys through puffy clouds, past bedlike mounds, and under a moon hung by a string, and finally stands "awake and alone, with the sleeping world around him." But not to worry, for here comes his mother to scoop him up, carry him through a land of oversized bathroom fixtures and a giant tube of toothpaste, and put him in his warm, cozy bed. With their careful, creative details (the zipper in a toy tiger's stomach, wooden soldiers parading with toothbrushes, the toy train's cars filled with sleepy nursery-rhyme characters), the dusky golden and purple watercolors complement and enhance the text. Like Denys Cazet's I'm Not Sleepy (Orchard, 1992) and Martin Waddell's Can't You Sleep Little Bear? (Candlewick, 1992), this charming story will soon become a favorite part of the bedtime ritual.?Jane Marino, Scarsdale Public Library, NY
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Ages 3^-6. A boy (who appears to be about two years old) announces to his mother that he is going to stay up all night. He then revs up his red toy car and drives away so fast his mother can't catch him. He soon meets up with a tiger, but the beast is too sleepy to play, as are the others he encounters--soldiers, who march with toothbrushes over their shoulders; animal musicians; and even the moon. At last the boy is so tired he is grateful when his mother scoops him up and puts him to bed. The "real" story emerges in Cooper's ingenious watercolors: a little boy stays up late playing in his room, his surroundings bathed in the golden glow of lamplight. The tiger, looking very tigerish, is poised atop a bureau, and the moon hangs from a mobile's string. The imaginary blends seamlessly with the real, and although children will probably take everything at face value at first, repeated reading will lead them to the wonderful discovery that the boy is really safe in his cozy home with his mom waiting patiently nearby. Susan Dove Lempke

From Kirkus Reviews
After a promising start, this bedtime book from Cooper (Little Monster Did It!, 1996, etc.) runs out of gas. A little boy is tooling around the house in his toy car when his mother calls him to bed. Unhappy with that prospect, he motors the car right into a fantasy land to look for nighttime revellers. It's late; everyone he encounters is sleepy. ``Nighttime is for snoring, not roaring,'' says the tiger, and some soldiers concur in their own manner. The train is too tired; so are the musicians and the moon. Even his toy car nods off. Pushing it homeward, he runs into his mother, ``someone who was ever so sleepy, but couldn't go to bed before the boy did.'' A lullaby book isn't necessarily supposed to be full of zip, but the characters possess such little life that the story seems inordinately drawn out. As always, Cooper's artwork can't be faulted: The sumptuous, imaginative watercolors are replete with dreamy intent. (Picture book. 3-7) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

It works.
This is one of our family's favorite bedtime books. The illustrations are fabulous, but the increasing drowsiness of the text, paced very much like a lullaby, carries the day (or night). It is guaranteed to have me yawning by about page 4, and catches my son's attention even on nights when his toy trains and trucks have far more appeal than the prospect of bedtime. There are some wonderful lines in the text, like the parenthetical notation "(She was a very strong mother.)" that have a way of making you feel good about the Battle for Bedtime. It's a book that's meant to be read out loud. I've bought several extra copies to give as gifts to other parents, and recommend it without hesitation.

A "bad" baby's journey into night
It doesn't take long for the trouble to start in "The Boy who wouldn't go to Bed". Confronted with the age-old parental imperative of "Bedtime", appalled at the absurdity of such a command when "it's still light", and utterly unintimidated by the power disparity involved, the baby retorts with a steely "No!", hops into his car and roars off into the night, leaving his mother far behind. At the outset the illustrations are suffused with a beautiful golden light but as the journey progresses that light begins to fail and we are left to reflect on the wisdom of the baby's decision.

This baby is a man of action who is bound to appeal to any child who's ever confronted an "unreasonable" bedtime, or any other "unreasonable" parental dictat. His dynamic response shows from the outset that he is a force to be reckoned with who will not kowtow to authority figures, no matter now mighty. The stage is set for a showdown more reminiscent of "Cool-Hand Luke" or "Braveheart", for it is clear our hero is prepared to match himself against any adversary. No whining, crying or ineffectual complaining here, but a forthright declaration of independence by the baby. Yet as the story progresses it is clear that independence has its price. The baby's long journey into night brings him up against all kinds of dark, mysterious characters, each with their own, sleep-related agenda. The night world beyond the bedroom soon proves resistant (or at least too sleepy to respond) to the baby's efforts to command it and as the tale progresses even the baby's faithful car threatens to fail him. The baby searches in vain for reliable (or at least wakeful) companions to share his adventures but without a Gandalf to help him assemble a "fellowship" his journey to the world of darkness threatens to be a lonely one. And just when it looks like he's really on his own, it becomes apparent that something or someone is pursuing the baby, and not until the book's grand finale do we see who that pursuer is (though knowing parents can probably guess!).

The book's message, if it has one, is that there are primordial forces in this world that even a baby with a car should hesitate to match himself against, and that the rhythms of nighttimes and bedtimes are beyond the power of mere children to challenge. Like King Canute, by book end the baby has learned an important lesson about the power of nature and that we all have to sleep sometime.

Helen Cooper conveys that lesson with incredible skill. Her beautiful, award-winning illustrations capture the light of the failing day perfectly, and the progression from gold to dusk to gloom enhances the sense of a journey from one realm to another. And at the end of the book we see that the strange creatures and settings our hero encounters have their analogues much closer to home.

Like Scorcese's "After Hours", this book is perfect at conveying that sense of things closing down for the night, and the terrors of being caught outside alone, far from home, in a strange territory full of characters who won't conform to our ideas of what is proper night behaviour. It also reminds me of "The Phantom Tollbooth", another child's toy auto journey into a fantastic night world.

This is a wonderful bedtime book that is great fun reading to small children (7 and below). The Breugel-like level of detail in the illustrations are an endless source of fascination for small children. Each time you read it there is liable to be a new detail that catches their interest and provokes discussion, though sometimes requiring an adult to improvise explanations for certain illustrations that aren't apparent from the text. The text is simple but fresh, with stimulating repetitions, and lots of opportunities for interactive dialogues between child and reader. The tensions in the story and the sly humour of many of the illustrations and situations make it exciting to read while the relentless repetition of its main theme - the importance of sleep - can be quite sleep-inducing. I've almost fallen asleep reading it sometimes, yet by no means from boredom. It is so easy to identify with that baby, and share his frustration as his efforts to find fellow travellers fail. Right from the opening bedtime showdown I can tell the children I read it to are thinking "Been there! Been there!" We are all torn between rooting for the baby yet worrying about the implications for bedtimes everywhere if he succeds .

I would strongly recommend this book for anyone involved with small children.

Great book
My almost 2 year old son got this book for X-mas.We have been reading it everyday since. He loves it! After reading this book 3 or 4 times he says sleepy now when it is time to go to bed.
I like it because it seems to get the message across that night is for sleeping. Plus it has beautiful illustrations and the text isn't completely assanine. After writing this I am going to but some more of this authors books. Too bad she doesn't have one about going to the potty:)