time to SLEEP - Steve Jenkins and Robin Page

Sleep tight...

Where will you fall asleep tonight?

Who knew that gorillas like to snuggle? Or that long-horned bees hang on a twig throughout the night and it is unknown whether they're simply resting or actually sleeping? Or that bottlenose dolphins sleep with one-half of their brain at a time? The other half has to remember to breathe, remember? This precious and beautiful book tells the stories of various animals and how they go to sleep, whether it is at night or during the day. Readers can learn more about these animals in the very back of the book, where each one gets a small blurb and paragraph on one of the final pages. 

I loved the introductory paragraph to this book that took place on the inside of the book flap. It reads:

It's time to sleep! You can doze off standing on one leg, settle down for a nap on the sea floor, or crawl into a hole and snooze until spring. Or perhaps you'd rather slip into a slimy sleeping bag? In this bedtime book, Steve Jenkins and Robin Page take a look at some of the unusual ways animals get their rest. Try them yourself, or - just maybe - your own bed sounds more comfortable?

What a perfect way to introduce a book that does just what it describes. I can definitely imagine reading this to my own children before bedtime, before a kindergarten class and their naptime (if kindergarteners have that anymore - that was my favorite time of the day!), or even as an integrated portion of a science lesson. 

Students aren't simply learning about typical animals that they've heard of. They're learning about new animals, too. Before reading this book, I didn't know that there was actually an animal named a basilisk (that name only referred to this for me), that wood frogs existed, or that dolphins use one half of their brains at a time so they can sleep, but still swim and breathe! The cover (shown to the left) make students interested and want to read because of the sweet and gentle giraffe. I think that the book balances the sweet and adorable with the gross and slimy, appealing (albeit stereotypically) to both genders at the same time. We don't just learn about the cute and cuddly koala bear or the snuggling gorillas. We also learn that the parrotfish sleeps in a bubble of its own mucus. GROSS. We then learn that a hairy armadillo sleeps for nearly 20 hours a day. WEIRD. 

The only thing that frustrated me about this book was the lack of a clear bibliography. I think that often, we assume that because this is a children's picturebook, bibliographies aren't needed. However, that isn't true. I appreciated the individualized paragraphs at the end that went into more detail, but I wanted to know where that detail came from. Although that decreased the authenticity for me, I still would potentially read this to a class, but only after conducting research on my own and seeing if the facts were right!