Tired Town

by Patricia Marx, Roz Chast (Illustrator)

Overview

Goodnight Moon meets Goodnight Already! in this very funny bedtime book from New Yorker contributors Patricia Marx and Roz Chast.

This is the story of Nellie Bee Nightly, who is not tired at all. And swears she never will be!

The popcorn is too pooped to pop, and the nightstand is too tired to stand up straight and must lie down — but Nellie? Nope, she's wide awake, and not ready for bedtime AT ALL. Instead, she gives her goldfish a mustache and hangs her bed from the ceiling so that she can install a swimming pool in her room. Nellie, after all, went to sleep last night, and shouldn’t that be enough sleep to last a lifetime?

Wonderfully quirky, subversively sweet, and effortlessly classic, Tired Town is a brilliant new bedtime story from humorist Patricia Marx and Roz Chast, the #1 New York Times-bestselling and award-winning creator of Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir and I Must Be Dreaming.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250859129
Publisher:	Roaring Brook Press
Publication date:	10/10/2023
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	394,838
Product dimensions:	9.20(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	AD580L (what's this?)
Age Range:	3 - 6 Years

About the Author

Patricia Marx is a longtime New Yorker staff writer and a former writer for SNL and Rugrats. Her novels, Him Her Him Again the End of Him, and Starting from Happy were Thurber Prize finalists. She's the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her first children's book, Now Everybody Really Hates Me (illustrated by Roz Chast), was the first and only winner of the Friedrich Medal, an award made up by Patricia and named after her air conditioner. She has never slept in her life.

Roz Chast’s work has appeared in numerous magazines through the years, but she is most closely associated with the New Yorker. In addition to collections of her New Yorker cartoons, Chast has written and illustrated a wide range of books. Her first memoir, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? won a National Book Critics Circle Award and was a National Book Award finalist. She has two pet birds, who would prefer she never slept.

Editorial Reviews

08/21/2023

As the sun sets on Manhattan-esque Tired Town, this antic picture book’s collaborators (Now Everybody Really Hates Me) portray the city’s thoroughly exhausted residents: “The spaghetti is so drained, it can’t stand up straight. The eggs are so fried, they can’t keep their yolks open,” Marx writes. But sleep is a no-go for pale-skinned Nellie Bee Nightly, who sports wide-open eyes and a bright cloud of red hair. “I went to sleep LAST night,” she tells her pleading parents, and then devises a long list of pre-bed to-do’s . In Chast’s comically anxious watercolors, which fairly vibrate with activity, the child persuades doll Naked Nancy to don pj’s, gives goldfish Cheesy a makeover, and creates a walkway from her bed to the bathroom. As the child finally lies down (“I’m not sleeping... I’m pretending to be a log”), the bedroom lamp calls a halt to the goings-on, turning itself off with a “KLIK” as Nellie, at last, drifts off. The recalcitrant sleeper is a mainstay of picture books, but this silly soporific by two of contemporary humor’s best brings real verve to the event. Ages 3–6. Author’s agent: Esther Newberg, ICM Partners. Illustrator’s agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

★ "As in all the best bedtime reads, rhythmic language joins somniferous images in both the art and the narrative to weave an effective spell that will send listeners in Nellie Bee’s wake straight to dreamland." - Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"This silly soporific by two of contemporary humor’s best brings real verve." - Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

★ 2023-08-12
When the whole bedroom, city, and even planet are bedding down for the night, how long can a wide-eyed child last?

The spaghetti may be sighing limply, the popcorn feeling “too pooped to pop,” a group of clustered high-rises themselves yawning, and even the sun sinking down with a weary wave to the moon—but Nellie Bee Nightly is wide, wide awake beneath her huge mop of electric red hair. Even her sleepy parents’ five-minute warning only forces her to lower the general volume…and maybe lie down on the bed for a moment: “I’m not sleeping,” she tells her goldfish, Cheesy. “I’m pretending to be a log.” Sure she is. And so, by the time the light has turned itself off and all the books are closed (including an oddly familiar copy of Goodnight, Cheddar), she is “dreaming of a girl who is dreaming of a girl who is dreaming of a girl who is not tired at all.” Nighty night. As in all the best bedtime reads, rhythmic language joins somniferous images in both the art and the narrative to weave an effective spell that will send listeners in Nellie Bee’s wake straight to dreamland. Nellie and her parents are light-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

No chance of insomnia when even the bedroom floor is snoring. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews