My Parents Think I'm Sleeping

by Jack Prelutsky, Yossi Abolafia (Illustrator)

Overview

From Children’s Poet Laureate Jack Prelutsky and illustrator Yossi Abolafia, My Parents Think I'm Sleeping is the perfect book to get young readers excited about bedtime. 

This Level 3 I Can Read book is a funny collection of poems about a boy who should be sleeping, but manages to find more than just storybooks and his model rocket kit to keep him awake.

From reading under the covers to watching shadows dance on the wall, these fourteen funny and spooky nighttime poems show that a child's life begins at bedtime!

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060537227
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	01/08/2008
Series:	I Can Read Level 3
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	48
Sales rank:	78,715
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.20(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Jack Prelutsky is the best-selling author of more than fifty books of poetry, including The New Kid on the Block, illustrated by James Stevenson, and Stardines Swim High Across the Sky, illustrated by Carin Berger. Jack Prelutsky lives in Washington State.

Yossi Abolafia is the illustrator of several I Can Read Books, including It's Snowing! It's Snowing!: Winter Poems by Jack Prelutsky, as well as Barbara Ann Porte's stories about Harry. He is also the author-illustrator of several of his own picture books, including Fox Tale and A Fish for Mrs. Gardenia. He lives with his family near Jerusalem.

Editorial Reviews

Will find an audience with Prelutsky fans.

Horn Book

Gr 2-4 Prelutsky turns his rollicking poetry talents to the problems and thoughts of bedtime. Unlike his Nightmares (Greenwillow, 1976), the night visions in these 14 poems are lighthearted rather than scary. ``A Spooky Sort of Shadow'' is really just a brush and comb; the monster in ``When I'm Very Nearly Sleeping'' can be frightened away by a bedside light . Abolafia's drawings, accompanying each poem, reinforce the book's domestic, comfortable tone. A literary dessert for collections that, like the narrator of the poem ``Chocolate Cake,'' have ``got an empty space.'' Kathleen D. Whalin, New Canaan Lib., Conn.

School Library Journal

First published as a Greenwillow stand-alone in 1985, this welcome I Can Read entry features Abolafia's updated, full-color illustrations for Prelutsky's 14 poetic explorations of the not-too-scary night. Prelutsky engages the reader conspiratorially by leading with the title poem, for which the artist supplies the resourceful brown-haired narrator with flash-lit books and model rocket parts, substituting an electronic game gadget for the earlier transistor radio. The pictures provide some amusing extensions. The lad dreamily plans his nighttime snack attack in "Chocolate Cake:" "I will slip into the kitchen/ without any noise or light, / and if I'm really careful, / I will have that cake tonight." In the facing picture, he catches his like-minded dad with cake in hand, cheeks bulging. The poems focus on gentle, philosophical musings about day, night, sun and sky, and the boy's mastery of his own nighttime fears is a developmentally appropriate touch. A nicely repackaged addition to a genre much needed within the easy-reader realm: poetry. (Easy reader. 5-8)

Kirkus Reviews