I Said, Bed!

March 1, 2014

PreS-K-In this cleverly imagined easy reader, a boy and his teddy bear do not want to go to sleep. "Bedtime is boring," the boy tells his mom. Fortunately the bear has a monkey wrench, which turns the bed into a four-wheeler racing out of the boy's room and then into a sailboat tossing on the ocean waves. With a turn of the wrench, the bed is transformed into a rocket going to the moon. "This bed can land," says the bear. "Let's land in the sand," says the boy. The pair is joined by three-eyed moon children. Soon, the boy and bear want their bed back, and by growing graceful green wings, it transports them home, where the boy sleeps amid rainbows and stars. Fanciful full-color artwork, done with colored pencils, allows the adventure to flow like an ever-changing dream. Emergent readers will appreciate the way familiar sight words and occasional rhymes are printed in speech bubbles. The word "bed" appears often, and the final page features nonsense words that rhyme with "sleep." Everything about this book is solid, from its picture-book size to its seamless melding of story and art. It raises the bar on what a beginning reader can be and will inspire any child to enjoy reading.-Mary Jean Smith, formerly at Southside Elementary School, Lebanon, TN

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2014
A book written for new readers seems more like fare for the toddler set. The unnamed protagonist is a boy who resists his stern mother's titular directive that he go to bed. Pictures depict her exasperation as she drags him down the hallway and then as she tries to get him out from under his bed. In a very abrupt mood shift on the facing page, she is then pictured sitting and smiling while reading aloud from a chair beside his bed. Playful colored pencil-and-graphite illustrations are anything but sleepy, and their busyness may prove overwhelming for emergent readers attempting to decode text. Furthermore, while the words themselves are simple enough to inspire confidence and independence, the bedtime-angst theme seems better suited to a younger audience. This concern is only somewhat mitigated when the art takes a fantastic turn, sending the boy and his teddy bear flying off on an adventure, as this part of the story is rather disjointed. They sail in a bed that has become like a boat and then encounter alien children who are also resisting bedtime. Then, the boy and teddy bear recognize the moon children's bed as their own, and they seize it and take it back home. Their appetite for fun satiated, they then decide to go to sleep, too. A mixed bag of a book. (Early reader. 5-7)

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July 1, 2014
Simple speech bubbles drive this imaginative early reader. A young boy doesn't want to go to bed, and as his mother reads to him, his bed turns into a car and flies into the night. More adventures follow as the boy and his teddy travel into outer space and finally back home again to sleep. Degen's scratched colored-pencil illustrations have an old-school feel.

(Copyright 2014 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)