You knew that already, right? That Penguin and Tiny Shrimp don’t do bedtime?
Reminds you of your own kiddos, if you’ve got really young ones, yes?
How they just don’t – no way-y-y-y-y-y – do bedtime?
Nuh uh. Nope. Not ever, ever, ever, ever gonna sleep again.
Well, you could always tell them to Go the Fuck to Sleep, like with Adam Mansbach and Richard Cortés’ book.
But maybe that’s not quite your style of parenting?
But – as four out of five sandmen recommend – you could lull them into a false sense of agreement with Cate Berry’s Penguin & Tiny Shrimp Don’t Do Bedtime – and then watch the darlings drift off to dreamland. Which, page by page by page, they will.
Not because the book’s at all yawn-inducing – oh, it’s a pure delight, especially with the clever Berry words and the full-color illustrations by Charles Santoso, even before the fabled uni-hippo shows up – but because of course children “do bedtime.” You just have to coax them along a little bit, sharing a charming book like this one about Penguin and Tiny Shrimp, until they … eventually … nod … off … and – oh!
Did we mention there’s a uni-hippo in the story?
Note: There’s a uni-hippo that gets all caught up in the antics of Penguin and Tiny Shrimp; it’s an almost Boytonesque sort of creature, and the perfect foil to our sleep-denying duo.
We’re adults (mostly) here at the Chronicle, and we want to do bedtime as often as possible; but we’re kinda losing sleep over here, now, waiting for a sequel to this thing, wanting to hang out with Penguin and Tiny Shrimp at the Thinkery, wanting to buy that uni-hippo a sazerac at the Tigress on North Loop …
So we’ll have to ask Cate Berry on Sunday at BookPeople what happens next … after she signs our copies of this book that our kiddos are gonna love even when they’re wide awake.
This article appears in May 11 • 2018.