Sleep

by Barbara Herkert, Daniel Long (Illustrator)

Overview

From whales and elephants to cicadas and spiders, discover how and why living creatures rest.

What is sleep? What is resting? What is the difference between them? This book explains that difference by looking at why people need sleep, how we sleep, and looking at how animals either sleep or rest.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807574355
Publisher:	Whitman, Albert & Company
Publication date:	10/27/2022
Series:	Imagine This!
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	10.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	AD1020L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Barbara Herkert is the author of three picture book biographies. She has a background in biology and fine art, and received a MFA in writing for children and young adults from Hamline University. She lives in Port Ludlow, Washington, on the beautiful Olympic Peninsula, with a variety of wildlife as neighbors.

Daniel Long graduated from Norwich University of the Arts in 2014 and has been working as an illustrator in Norfolk, England, ever since. His work is heavily influenced by mid-century design, architecture, and fashion, which can be seen in his color palettes and his choice of subject matter.

Editorial Reviews

"A solid introduction to the biological function of sleep."—School Library Journal

"An informative addition to the Imagine This! series."—Booklist

From the Publisher

09/01/2022

PreS-Gr 3—Part of the "Imagine This!" series, this title delves into how and why sleep is a necessary function and what various animals do during their slumber. The main text discusses sleep cycles, how long different species sleep, and how some animals only sleep with half their brain at a time. Additional details, such as the lack of REM sleep in dolphins and whales, are in smaller font and tucked into the illustrations rather than set aside in text boxes. Illustrations show a variety of animals resting—puppies snuggled on a blanket, sperm whales "floating tail-down," bats hanging from tree branches. The final spread is a baby in a crib accompanied by an explanation of how the amount of sleep needed changes as humans grow. Back matter includes an author's note, glossary, and suggested books. Readers will be surprised to learn that animals as varied as jellyfish and elephants sleep in very different ways. This book strikes a nice balance between explaining the human need for sleep and how our sleep cycles compare to those of animals around the world. VERDICT A solid introduction to the biological function of sleep; sure to please budding biologists and those who keep asking "Why do I have to go to bed?"—Suzanne Costner

School Library Journal

2022-09-14
An introduction to the ways humans and certain other animals rest and sleep.

Readers drawn by Long’s painted view of snoozing sperm whales suspended tails-down on the cover will find a series of equally engaging scenes within, ranging from a light-skinned human baby, a pile of drowsy puppies, and somnolent sea otters holding paws (aww) to sacked-out bats, sharks, and even jellyfish. What they won’t find is consistently reliable information. Though Herkert does accurately describe REM sleep, for instance, and the diverse sleeping patterns of various wild creatures—all while noting that elephants chew food while sleeping, that orb spiders have a 17-hour internal cycle rather than the otherwise universal 24 hour one, and other fascinating tidbits—she wrongly differentiates torpor from hibernation (one is actually a type of the other) and offers contradictory data in adjacent paragraphs about how long frigate birds sleep per day. Kate Prendergast’s Sleep: How Nature Gets Its Rest (2019) will safely lull younger audiences; for slightly older ones, the hitches in Octavio Pintos’ How Does an Octopus Sleep? (2022), illustrated by Martín Iannuzzi, are at least less significant. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Curious students tempted to dive into this may want to sleep on it. (author’s note, resources, glossary) (Informational picture book. 6-8)

Kirkus Reviews