Go to Bed, Monster!

Go to Bed, Monster! by Natasha Wing

Illustrated by Sylvie Kantorovitz

2007

     One night, Lucy "could not, would not, did not want to go to bed." She wanted to draw instead.  She grabbed her crayons and began drawing geometrical figures, and suddenly the shapes started moving on the paper and right before her eyes they turned into a monster.  The monster roared, but Lucy was not scared, she was just happy to have someone to play with!  Monster and Lucy played and played; they built castles, flew planes, ran and jumped all over her room...until Lucy was exhausted.  "Let's play sleeping lions." But Monster does not want to go to sleep now! He has a laundry list of reason why he can't go to sleep yet -and if you're a parent, you've heard them all- he's hungry, thirsty, cold,  needs to use the potty, scared, not sleepy, the room is too dark...Lucy does everything she can to appease him, and at the end, only when she reads him a bedtime story, does Monster fall asleep next to Lucy.

     Go to Bed, Monster! is a great bedtime story.  Young kids will see themselves in Lucy and Monster.  My son asked for a reread right away...and unfortunately for me, he already used a couple of Monster's excuses for staying out of bed tonight!  The oil pastels and oil paint illustrations by Kantorovitz are perfect: funny and sweet. The pastels give it a child-like quality that helps children connect with the story because they feel like one of "them" drew the illustrations.