How can it be time for sleeping already? The dish-soap bottle needs squeezing, the bathtub's rubber duck is calling and Jasper the dog's belly needs rubbing. A young boy never wants his good day to end in Lisa Graff's debut picture book, It Is Not Time for Sleeping.
His amiable parents drop not-so-subtle clues about their son's impending bedtime, but the boy resists: "When dinner is over,/ Dad runs water in the sink. I squeeze the soap and make bubbles./ 'It's getting dark,' he says, while he scrubs and scrubs./ 'It could be darker,' I tell him./ It is not time for sleeping." It's not time for sleeping even after the boy's toes get wrinkled in the bathtub, not after he dons his pajamas, "the bear ones with feet," not even when he's brushed his teeth upside-down with "top ones on bottom and bottoms on top." The story crescendos to a fun-to-read-aloud, "This is the house that Jack built"-style cumulative finale: "When dinner is over and the dishes are scrubbed and I'm squeaky-squeak clean and zipped up to my chin and my teeth are shiny and I've said goodnight to Jasper and I'm tucked tight in my bed and the story is done, Mom turns off the lights." Even then, there's still time for a hug... before... sleep.
Caldecott Honor artist Lauren Castillo (Nana in the City; Melvin and the Boy; The Troublemaker) makes a cozy story even cozier with her warm-toned, richly textured ink and watercolor illustrations. Thick, soft black lines echo the comforting solidity of this loving trio who've clearly been through this routine before. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness