Sleepy Stories

by Mario Levrero, Diego Bianki (Illustrator), Alicia Lopez (Translator)

Overview

A buoyant account of the nightly tug-of-war between a sleepy father and his son, and the richly imaginative "sleepy stories" they create

Each story told in Sleepy Stories drifts deeper into a beguiling dream world, telling of an elastic gentleman who stretches his body across town to effortlessly slip into bed, or of another sleepy young man who curls inside an upside-down umbrella to take a snooze. In Diego Bianki's magical universe, the waking world is made small (a French press and a red top hat shrink before our eyes), while the dream world Levrero and his son Nicolás build together (a land of sly frogs, giant apes, and smiling squids) waltzes across the page. On the last of Bianki's whimsical illustrations, Nicolás holds the book over his father's nodding head and says, "Another." This is a book to giggle with and curl up with, to take on every sleepy adventure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781939810847
Publisher:	Steerforth Press
Publication date:	07/06/2021
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.59(w) x 10.92(h) x 0.45(d)
Age Range:	5 - 8 Years

About the Author

Mario Levrero was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1940 and died in 2004. Levrero was a photographer, bookseller, comics scriptwriter, humorist, crossword author, and creator of brain games. In his later years, he directed a literary workshop. His novel Empty Words was published in English in 2019.

Diego Bianki is an illustrator, editor, and designer from Argentina. He is co-founder and artistic director of Pequeño Editor, a collective publishing project based in Buenos Aires that specializes in illustrated books. For his illustrations, he has won the 2013 Bologna New Horizons Prize for the book Diccionario para armar, the Konex Career Illustration Prize, and the 2012 Illustration Prize from the Venezuelan Banco del Libro for the book Candombe fiebre de carnaval. He has also won two White Ravens, awarded by Munich's Internationale Jugendbibliothek.

Alicia López is a translator and sculptor. She grew up in San José, Costa Rica and currently lives in California.

Read an Excerpt

Nicolás: Tell me a story.
me: No; I’m sleepy.
nicolás: It doesn’t matter that you’re sleepy. Tell me a story anyway.
me: Okay, but it’s going to be a sleepy story.
nicolás: Yes, yes. It doesn’t matter if it’s a sleepy story.
me: Okay. Yawn. There was once . . . yawn . . . there was once a man who was sleepy. Very sleepy. So sleepy that he couldn’t make it all the way home to lie down in his bed and sleep. So . . . yawn . . . so he opened the umbrella he was carrying, set it upside down on the ground, and curled up inside it to sleep. And he slept and he slept until it started to rain. And it rained and it rained until the umbrella filled to the brim with water, and the man started to drown and woke himself yelling, “I’m drowning, I’m drowning.” Then he clambered up and saw it was raining, and he reached for the umbrella to protect himself from the downpour, but since the umbrella was filled with rain, all the water rushed down and soaked the man even more. And here is where the story ends.
nicolás: Another.

Editorial Reviews

"Young Nicolás has a voracious appetite for stories and no sympathy for a profoundly sleepy storyteller . . . A storyteller identified only as “Me” spins the yarns to Nicolás, often yawning and nodding off midstory . . . Young readers and their perplexed grown-ups will want to read and reread again and again. Wildly imaginative, surreal, beautiful…in a word, this Argentine import is fabulous." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A nose-tap to every grownup who’s ever been wheedled into reading “just one more!” bedtime story, this is a funny collection whose reluctant narrator warns that his stories are rooted in his severe sleepiness. In them, similarly weary characters curl up in overturned umbrellas, stretch themselves across their houses, and are tossed between monkeys, but they don’t resist: all they want is to slumber. The book’s bold illustrations match the dream-like details of the narrator’s lethargic trip through parent-child nighttime struggles." —MICHELLE ANNE SCHINGLER, Foreword Reviews

"Bianki presents a world steeped in color: seas of deep crimson, teeming with incarnadine fish, and skies alike of red, but also of indigo, lavender, pink, and warm brown, and always crowded with flocking birds, branches, vines, or stars of lime or coral color . . . Crowded without being cluttered, with animals and sundry mysterious and surprising details, Bianki’s paintings will enchant readers young and old, and they warrant repeated viewing." - Youth Services Book Reviews

"The artwork in this one is quite original and will offer young readers something beyond the 'normal' picture book illustrations they're usually exposed to . . . The unique illustrations allow the quirkiness of 'Me's' tales to come across with an original and strange flair." —Bookworm for Kids

"I love the stories that Nicolás's dad tells him. They are beautifully crafted, goofy, filled with lots of creativity, and cuteness. You just can't help yourself but laugh when the dad tells these stories." — Olga Popivker, Stylish Modern Motherhood

"The stories were quite quirky and the illustrations were surreal, and I loved the whole thing!" ––Unleashing Readers

"You know those times when you are too tired to think straight, but your kiddo wants a story? That's the premise of Sleepy Stories. The father pleads exhaustion, but the child says that any story, even a sleepy story, would be fine . . . It's short, sweet, and totally relatable . . . Sleepy Stories is lovely and soothing, and it elicits chuckles from this adult reader." - Victoria DiMassa, Glass of Wine Glass of Milk

From the Publisher

08/01/2021

PreS-K—Nicolas loves to listen to stories, but his father is very, very sleepy—far too sleepy to tell a story. But when Nicolas insists, his father weaves five tall tales that fall somewhere between the waking world and dream land. Nicolas fights to keep his father awake as he imagines a sleepy man who curls up in an umbrella during a downpour, or another who stretches himself across town, limb by limb, until his exhausted body is entirely in his bed. Written in a format that mimics social media storytelling, Levrero captures the feeling of an exhausted parent attempting to appease a beloved, very imaginative child. Bianki's art gives the story a dreamy, otherworldly quality that is as charmingly and deliberately chaotic as the story itself. VERDICT A wholly relatable story for parents who must read "just one more," and a solid first purchase for story hours.—Erica Deb, Matawan Aberdeen P.L., NJ

School Library Journal

★ 2021-05-05
Young Nicolás has a voracious appetite for stories and no sympathy for a profoundly sleepy storyteller.

In a work told as a scripted dialogue, a storyteller identified only as “Me” spins the yarns to Nicolás, often yawning and nodding off midstory. But Nicolás is ever demanding, wanting those sleepy stories now. The six tales, told over three days, are all extremely bizarre. A man is too sleepy to make it home, so he curls up inside his umbrella until a heavy rain causes him to nearly drown. Another man stretches one part of his body at a time until his head reaches home and he pulls the rest of himself into bed. After more tales involving a skateboard and a long swim, monkeys and seals, robbers, and long bus rides, Nicolás asks for yet another, and it all comes to an abrupt, unexplained end. Bianki’s equally strange, deeply hued, full- and double-page illustrations alternate between depictions of the tales and scenes of the characters. Nicolás and “Me” seem to be a pair of birds with tuxedo tails, wearing shoes and socks on their long legs. They are seen at a table, atop a peacock with its egg alongside, in a tree, on a dog’s back, and in other odd positions, with “Me” holding a book, perhaps this very one. The tales’ actions are vividly depicted, with the addition of many odd bits and pieces floating through. Young readers and their perplexed grown-ups will want to read and reread again and again.

Wildly imaginative, surreal, beautiful…in a word, this Argentine import is fabulous. (Picture book. 5-9)

Kirkus Reviews