Go to Sleep, Little Creep

In this bedtime tour of a spooky alternate universe, Quinn (the Not for Children Children’s Books series) and Spires (the Binky the Space Cat series) show that monster and fiend parents face the same challenges getting their offspring to sleep as their human counterparts. As dawn threatens to break across the sky, a tired-eyed ghost parent tries to coax its baby, cuddled against a tombstone, to get some shut-eye (“I’ll always love you, to the grave./ But frankly, dear, it’s sleep I crave.”), while a lagoon-dweller holds a swaddled, beatific baby and sings a bubbly lullaby (“blupblupblooop”). Despite their shared need for sleep, the grown-up mummy, zombies, and vampire, among others, understand that baby ghouls have bedtime fears (in their case, the “horrid things” are bunnies, unicorns, and fluffy kittens), just as they believe that having a “tiny terror” to love is beyond compare. “So good night, moon. Farewell, night./ Guard me and mine throughout the light.” Ages 2–5. [em]Author’s agent: Bernadette Baker-Baughman, Victoria Sanders & Assoc. Illustrator’s agent: Claire Easton, Painted Words. (July) [/em]