I’ve noticed something about books for small children. It’s something so insidious you may not have spotted it, even if (like us) you already have an extensive library of picture books to entertain your wee ones.
There’s a covert propaganda campaign being fought. A campaign which, despite all its subtlety, has a very clear message: go to sleep, sleep is good, bedtime is the best time ever.
Now, like most parents of small children I guess, I value the times my son is asleep. It’s nice to have relaxed periods when your little bundle of joy is inert and not careering headlong from one deadly hazard to the next. So I’m all for gently persuading children that sleep is a good thing. I just think that maybe the publishers have gone way overboard in pushing the bedtime agenda.
Tom has several books explicitly about the bedtime ritual. Maisy’s Bedtime and How do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? are two examples, and they’re great books too. But then bedtime seems to crop up at the end of nearly all his other books too.
I think it’s partly because the books are designed to be read at bedtime, and the authors think perhaps if they put in lots of stuff about yawning and brushing teeth and kissing goodnight before drifting quietly into slumber, the child being read the story will take the hint and obediently nod off too.
But partly, I think, the reason why so many picture books end with the main character going to sleep is that the authors couldn’t be bothered to think of a proper ending.
They tend to go into so much detail, too. Just to fill space. Nitty gritty about brushing teeth, and picking favorite teddies, and being read bedtime stories. I mean what’s the point of reading a bedtime story about reading a bedtime story?
It’s something you never see in books for grown ups. Sure, characters go to sleep, but I can’t think of any novel where the last chapter has been all about the protagonist getting ready for bed.
I mean, it would really bugger up the end of Jane Eyre…
Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had. That very evening we returned to the manor house, and having carefully brushed our teeth, washed our faces, each chosen our favorite teddy bears and changed into our night attire, retired to our beds and fell blissfully asleep.
F I N I S
See? Rubbish. And yet we expect our children to put up with it.
Anyway, rant over. It’s time I went to bed.
Nice post, I noticed the very same thing when ours were smaller than they are now. So many of our books end with / revolve around bedtime.
i’ve been meaning to write a post like this for ages. I even had plans of making two piles of books – those with a bedtime ending and those without. I’m convinced the bedtime ending would be twice as tall.