Everyone Sleeps

by Marcellus Hall, Marcellus Hall (Illustrator)

Overview

In this good-night book that explains how a variety of animals go to sleep, the sun has set and the whole family has gone to bed, except for their dog, Conrad. Curious to find out if anyone else is awake, he wanders far and wide—through fields and forests, across lakes and oceans—only to find all creatures fast asleep. Conrad is wide-awake, although counting a herd of snoring sheep does make him drowsy! Is everyone asleep?

Marcellus Hall’s lush nighttime scenes glow with warmth in this playful bedtime story, which features a variety of land and sea creatures, and is narrated by a funny little goggle-eyed pug who will steal readers’ hearts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101627976
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	05/02/2013
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
File size:	33 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	3 - 5 Years

About the Author

Marcellus Hall (www.marcellushall.com) also illustrated Cybils Award finalist The Cow Loves Cookies (by Karma Wilson); Texas Bluebonnet Award winner City I Love and Full Moon and Star (both by Lee Bennett Hopkins); and Because I Am Your Daddy, Because You Are My Baby, and Because You Are My Teacher (all by Sherry North). Everyone Sleeps is the first children’s book that he has also written. His illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Time, Parenting, and Nickelodeon Magazine. He has self-published several books of drawings and writings, including Hard Luck Stories and Legends of the Infinite City. He is also a musician, and his solo album The First Line was released in 2011. He lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

In illustrator Hall’s first book as author, too, a family’s diminutive, anxiety-ridden pug, Conrad, is plagued with sleeplessness. Conrad’s enormous, moist eyes widen in consternation as he watches the family head upstairs (“Everyone is getting ready for bed./ ‘Good night, everyone,’ they all said”), leaving him alone. Hall (Because You Are My Teacher) works in casual, swoopy watercolor, gouache, and ink, painting fields of dark purples and blues and pools of moonlight as Conrad wanders far and wide, discovering that other animals aren’t bothered by insomnia. “Ducks sleep swimming in a row./ What about plants? I don’t know./ Frogs spend their nights/ at the bottoms of lakes.../ A bear sleeps for months before he wakes.” Conrad even takes a diminutive motorboat out into the sea to check out sleeping otters, as well as a polar bear slumbering on an ice floe, where the pug’s eyes take on an especially alarmed cast. Straightforward verse and pared-down spreads make for even pacing, and the story moves smartly to its conclusion as Conrad finally finds companionship and consolation. Ages 3–5. (May)

Publishers Weekly

A dreamlike narrative. . . . Magical, ethereal tone. . . . Intriguing illustrations in ink, watercolor and gouache capture the mysterious tone of the world at night, with a wide variety of perspectives. . . . An inventive . . . look at the nighttime world of nature.” — Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

PreS-Gr 1—A pug suffering from insomnia explores the world of sleep, traveling far and wide to observe and contemplate the sleeping habits of different types of animals (including a cave full of bats, inexplicably sleeping during the night). The rhymes are forced and uneven: "Look at this!/It's a herd of sheep…/and every one is fast asleep./How many sheep? A hundred or so?/Maybe a thousand? I don't know./There are more sheep here than I've ever seen./I count a few-/yawn/Then see more in between!" Finally, the dog returns home, frustrated by his inability to join the world of slumber, and finds a wide-awake companion before ironically falling asleep and leaving his friend awake and alone. The art far outshines this well-intentioned story. Hall's cartoon animals are delightful. It's impossible not to be charmed watching the pug's growing consternation as the evidence builds and he wonders if he's the only one who cannot sleep. As in Karma Wilson's The Cow Loves Cookies (S & S, 2010), Hall's figures are rendered with confident gestural outlines and gorgeous shading that conveys emotion and action in a way that is a joy to behold. Anyone with a soft spot for the oddball cuteness of pugs and their like will have a hard time resisting these illustrations and likely be willing to overlook the awkward writing. A supplemental purchase for large collections.—Anna Haase Krueger, Ramsey County Library, White Bear Lake, MN

School Library Journal

An imaginative pug with insomnia explores the night world of sleeping animals with a dreamlike narrative in rhyming text. Conrad the pug just isn't interested in sleep when his family heads off to bed. He slips out into the night alone and sees all sorts of familiar animals sleeping near his home. As Conrad ventures further into the heart of darkness (his name is Conrad, after all), his observations veer into the fantastical. He can see under water and into distant environments, spotting such unusual animals as elephants, monkeys, a panda and a tiger. At first Conrad is an observer, but he becomes a participant, swimming with the "creatures of the deep" and sleeping on his back tucked into a group of walruses. He returns home to find the little girl of his family still awake, and Conrad falls asleep in her bed. Readers will find the girl in an irritated state of wakefulness on the final page. This jarring attempt at a humorous ending doesn't complement the magical, ethereal tone of Conrad's journey. Intriguing illustrations in ink, watercolor and gouache capture the mysterious tone of the world at night, with a wide variety of perspectives and creatively integrated strings of ZZZs coming from the sleeping creatures. An inventive if not wholly successful look at the nighttime world of nature. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews