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| Label: | Akashic Books |
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Editorial Reviews
"Total genius."
--Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn, father of two
"A children's book for grown-ups! I really did laugh out loud--hilarious!"
--David Byrne, musician, father of one
"I wish this book had been around during my daughter's overly protracted sleep rituals! Finally, someone tells it like it really is. This is no-guilt funny and a godsend!"
--Cristina Garcia, author of The Lady Matador's Hotel, mother of one
Go the Fuck to Sleep is a bedtime book for parents who live in the real world, where a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don't always send a toddler sailing blissfully off to dreamland. Profane, affectionate, and radically honest, California Book Award-winning author Adam Mansbach's verses perfectly capture the familiar--and unspoken--tribulations of putting your little angel down for the night. In the process, they open up a conversation about parenting, granting us permission to admit our frustrations, and laugh at their absurdity.
With illustrations by Ricardo Cortes, Go the Fuck to Sleep is beautiful, subversive, and pants-wettingly funny--a book for parents new, old, and expectant. You probably should not read it to your children.
Related Reviews
A great laugh at one of the biggest frustrations of parenting
Do not buy this book if you have perfect kids- you won't get it.
And definately do not buy this book if you dislike swearing- you will hate it.
But for those who have kids that find every excuse not to go to bed and get driven nuts at night trying to be patient- this is hilarious!
We all love our kids and this book says what goes through our minds sometimes but would never say.
One of the finest works of literature of the 21st century.
From the start, turning from page to page, the reader is at once both mesmorized and beguiled by the wondrous grasp of language--both literal and figurative--which populates this tome. It is a spectacle to behold: how such apparently sparse lines can electrify the reader as if we were there alongside the writer as he desperately tries to get his loved one to depart the conscious realm and enter the nightly unconscious world of dream and splendor. We hear the author's words, the scent of the home rising through our curious nostrils, the sweep of the air throughout the bedroom and beyond.
Capturing this with such brevity and mercurial drive, Mansbach leads the charge on every new stanza, a word-wrangler of supreme expertise, wrenching forth a brutal honesty of expression from the sinews of every paragraph, word, and letter.
Not to be outdone, the illustrations of Cortés unapologetically illuminate each notion, grasping out from the page, with a combination of photo-realism and post-Dadaist abstraction that jangle the nerves in a way that jolts and reassures in equal measure. With each color and stroke, the artist bares his soul: clearly he is a happy clown, crying inside. Pain is encapsulated in red skies, an overburdened picnic stands-forth, turning Zeus's microscope across the petri-dish of humanity, taking no prisoners, denying no deniers. Happiness has a location: within these pages.
If one were to recommend another book with similar themeatic weight and tension, it would have to be -
I Thought You Little Feckers Were Asleep Already
which can be said to be the Yang to this book's Yin.
It's OK for 5 minutes of moderate entertainment
For example:
You could get "Bucky Katt's Big Book of Fun: A Get Fuzzy Treasury" and laugh your silly butt off for 243 solid pages usually with 3 cartoons, or "comedy units" each. That is 729 top shelf chuckles. It's $11.55 at Amazon today. That's 1.5 cents per chuckle, with at LEAST 100 belly laughs in the mix. This Book has 30 pages, with one moderate comedy unit per page. At $8 that works out to 26 cents per chuckle. And the first five or six aren't really a full "comedy unit" , they are really more of an opening act.
Now, I'm not here to do a Get Fuzzy Commercial, at least not until Mr. Conley comes up with a small check or a free book (HINT HINT). I'm just using that particular book as an example as it is physically within reach, and I am kind of lazy. I'm just trying to make a point that most of the value of this publication isn't in it's comedic quality, it's in it's novelty and fad value.
For novelty I give 5 stars. For value I give it 1. That averages to 3 stars, I think.
Am I glad I purchased it? Not really. Is it worth the bother of a return for $8.18? Nah. It's not a bad book, it's just a 99 cent book, not a book of 8-15 times that price unless you simply HAVE to own it because it's fashionable. If that's the case you should buy it. It will seem like a much smarter buy to you anyway.
Hoping you can ship in time for Father's Day!
My husband is the one who re-puts out 4 yr old to bed each night and I am on duty for the 1 yr old.
I ordered this and am REALLY hoping it gets here for Father's Day!!!
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In this small book, Mr. Mansbach has illuminated and marginalized one of the greatest frustrations everyone faces in the first few years as a parent -- putting their child to sleep. As the father of a not quite 1 year old and a 2 1/2 year old, I've more than once screamed the title of this book in my own head. Granted, no parent should scream this out loud to their child, so it's good to know that these not-quite-inappropriate rage isn't unique to me.
Richard Cortes' artwork is so sincere and sublime that I truly believe a non-English reader who picked up this book would have no idea it was meant for adults. The contrast between Mr. Mansbach's brutally honest prose and Mr. Cortes' beautifully genuine paintings creates another level of hilarity.
I was ultimately astounded that reading this book proved to be a cathartic experience. In the few weeks since reading this book, I've found that putting my children to sleep isn't nearly as disheartening as the task had been before. Rather, when my son now asks me for a fifth stuffed animal and "Where mommy?" for the 10th time, a smile creeps on my face just thinking of this book.