Seriously, Just Go to Sleep

by Adam Mansbach, Ricardo Cortés (Illustrator)

Overview

The children's version of the #1 New York Times bestselling classic

Seriously, Just Go to Sleep is the G-rated, child-friendly version of the book every parent has been talking about.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781453257807
Publisher:	Akashic Books
Publication date:	06/01/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
File size:	20 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	2 - 5 Years

About the Author

Adam Mansbach is a novelist, screenwriter, humorist, and cultural critic (in addition to having built an obscene fake children's book empire). His books include Rage Is Back, the California Book Award–winning The End of the Jews, and the best sellers Angry Black White Boy and For This We Left Egypt?, cowritten with Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel. Mansbach was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for his screenplay for the Netflix Original Barry, and is currently adapting his middle-grade novel Jake the Fake Keeps It Real for the Disney Channel. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, Esquire, and on National Public Radio's This American Life, the Moth, and All Things Considered.

RICARDO CORTÉS is the #1 New York Times best-selling illustrator of Go the F**k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach and Party: A Mystery, by the acclaimed author Jamaica Kincaid. Cortés has written and illustrated books including Sea Creatures from the Sky and A Secret History of Coffee, Coca & Cola. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, and on CNN, Fox News, and the Late Show with David Letterman. You can see his work at Rmcortes.com, or on Twitter and Instagram at @Rmcortes. His latest work is the updated edition of It’s Just a Plant.

Editorial Reviews

Like Cee Lo Green, whose “F**k You!” went from obscenity-based soul to squeaky-clean pop, Mansbach and Cortés recast 2011’s Go the F**k to Sleep for wider audiences. The changes diminish the cathartic humor of the original: Go the F**k to Sleep acknowledged how a sleepless child can drive a parent to cursing, bitter tears, and self-reproach. This version (dedicated “to all the children... may your kids bring you as much joy as you’ve brought us”) speaks reasonably, if curtly, to children up late. Mansbach leaves his four-line stanzas in the same order, censoring punch lines without improving on clunky rhymes. “Hell no” becomes “No way,” and “I know you’re not thirsty. That’s bullshit. Stop lying” becomes “I know you’re not thirsty. You just had a drink./ Stop goofing around now, and sleep.” Cortés makes only minor substitutions in his surreal paintings of children, who snooze with sleepy tigers or restlessly occupy their cribs. Given infinitely better options like Dinosaur vs. Bedtime and Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late! young and old ought to skip this unfunny, off-key revision. All ages. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Praise for the original Go the F*** to Sleep:

"Incredibly appealing." --National Public Radio

"What makes this latest book seductive is not so much its profanity as its articulation of verboten thoughts . . . letting parents off the hook for their self-recrimination and guilt over bedtime seems the most cathartic tonic." --New York Times

"A parenting zeitgeist . . . A phenomenon that has stunned the publishing world and may just redefine the modern 'parenting' market."--Washington Post

"Delightfully obscene." —Newsweek

"Nothing has driven home a certain truth about my generation, which is approaching the apex of its childbearing years, quite like this deranged book." —The New Yorker

"Perfectly timed, lightly applied touches of profanity are funny. Super funny. It's especially the case when the profanity puts words to common feelings that we aren't really allowed to own up to. Well, in that spirit comes this perfect little picture-book parody." —Booklist

"Its simple genius is that it's written in the inner voice of a tired, scrambling parent and in the style of the books they have to read over and over again, which are also driving them slowly insane." —The Australian

"Adam Mansbach has taken a bold step in writing a book that totally understands an unspoken part of parenthood." —Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"I can only wish that this book had been written when I was struggling through sleepless nights and ghastly bedtimes with my little dears! I think that any parent with young children will recognize the tone of voice in which this book is written—recognizing the frantic desperation and ever present guilt suffered by parents . . . Go the F*** to Sleep is a refreshing shot of reality." —BlogCritics.org

"Anyone who has ever had a newborn, an infant, a baby, a toddler, a preschooler . . . oh, heck, anyone who has ever known a young child will understand the impetus behind Adam Mansbach's runaway best seller and 'children's book for adults.'" —Shelf Awareness

"Go the F*** To Sleep by Adam Mansbach is probably the best children's book since Goodnight Moon, and it only gets better when read by Samuel L. Jackson." —Huffington Post

"Part of its appeal is the barbed send-up of a normally saccharine genre, but Go the F*** to Sleep is not, at base, a parody. It's more like what Wicked is to The Wizard of Oz—a book that tells a familiar story from the perspective of a previously marginalized character." —New York magazine

"By far the most funny, spot-on, gut-splitting picture book ever written (and that's not hyperbole), Go the F*** to Sleep made me laugh so hard I cried-from more than one orifice . . . Author Adam Mansbach is a genius. Why? Because he tells the truth and does it in such a sneaky creep-up-and-bite-you way." --New York Journal of Books

"The book's underlying message is that today's parents should cut themselves some slack." --Ottawa Citizen

"One book whose buzz began weeks ago and kept rising after its PDFs went viral, the wildly titled Go the F*** to Sleep . . . is still going strong. Dave Mallman, a bookseller at the Next Chapter, called it a 'stroke of genius that irreverently expresses the frustrations all parents face when dealing with our beloved but exasperating children.'" --PW Daily

"Studies have shown that children's sleeping patterns may dictate their parents' functioning, quality of life and marital happiness. And, given how most parents have to deal with a sleepless kid at some point—an issue for which there seem to be few easy solutions—maybe laughing a little to let off steam isn't a half-bad way to deal." —Los Angeles Times"

From the Publisher

The prepublication smash hit of 2011 Go the Fuck to Sleep gathers itself for a second run at number one on the bestseller list with a slightly repackaged version that features kid-safe language. The rhyming quatrains have been largely retained, with just the last line or two smoothed over for actual child audiences. "How come you can do all this other great shit / But you can't lie the fuck down and sleep?" becomes "You're incredibly cute, and super-duper smart, / But why's it so hard to just sleep?" after a little massage (which often casts scansion to the wind). The book's trim is larger than its original, and a few of the illustrations have been redone. In one scene, an African-American father tiptoes out of the room, as his cherubic child (maybe) nods off, where in the original both were Caucasian. But playing it straight just doesn't work for this effort. If anything made its progenitor funny, it was the juxtaposition of the parental cri de coeur against the worst excesses of the bedtime-book form. Syrupy imagery ("giant pangolins of Madagascar are snoozing") combined with equally gooey metaphorical illustrations in gleeful parody. Here, it's just another derivative piece of merchandising. The book's creators make sure readers know this: On the floor of the African-American child's bedroom, Go the Fuck to Sleep peeks out from underneath The Cat in the Hat and Goodnight Moon. Just as manipulative as the books it claims to mock. (Picture book. 2-6)

Kirkus Reviews