Oliver Who Would Not Sleep by Mara Bergman and Nick Maland

Oliver Who Would Not Sleep by Mara Bergman and Nick Maland
Buy Oliver Who Would Not Sleep by Mara Bergman and Nick Maland at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: For Sharing
Reviewer: Sue Magee
Summary: The ideal wind down story for the child who doesn't go off to sleep easily. The rhyme is wonderful - they'll be telling you what comes next very quickly and as a bonus it's a pleasure to read aloud. The illustrations will delight both parents and children.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 32	Date: 3 Jan 2008
Publisher: Hodder Children's Books
ISBN: 978-0340893296
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As a child the first verse to make an impression on me was

James James Morrison Morrison
Wetherby George Dupree
Took great care of his mother,
Though he was only three.

A A Milne has stayed with me in the intervening years and it was with some delight that I encountered

Oliver Donnington Rimington-Sneep
COULDN'T and DIDN'T
And WOULD NOT SLEEP

I was smiling with delight before we were at the bottom of the first page. Mara Bergman's wonderful verse and Nick Maland's hilarious illustrations had my full attention. Oliver is that child familiar to so many parents. He goes to bed but he doesn't sleep. It wasn't that he was afraid of anything and certainly not of the monsters that were climbing all over the house or the robber outside his bedroom window, but that

Oliver Donnington Rimington-Sneep Liked staying awake More than going to sleep.

Once tucked up in bed Oliver waited for his parents to go downstairs and then jumped out of bed and did all the things that children would love to once the light is out and they should be sleeping. But Oliver does them all to extremes, finally going on a trip to Mars. It was only then that he realised that he really wanted to go back home…

Some books appeal to children and some to their parents but it's a rare book that appeals to both. Every adult who has seen this book has read straight through and then gone back to the beginning and read it again, loving the rhyme and the anarchic illustrations, delighting in the fact that it's not just easy to read aloud – you have to! Children love it because of the impudence of the things that Oliver does when he really should be in bed and asleep. They're the things that they would all love to do. The story escalates quickly as Oliver becomes more extreme and then winds down until he gently subsides into sleep, his books, paintings, magic set and rocket scattered around the room. It's the ideal bedtime story.

I'd like to thank the lovely people at Hodder Children's Books for sending us a copy.

For another book that makes an ideal wind-down story at bedtime you might enjoy James Mayhew's Where's My Cuddle?.

I've only got one problem now. I can't stop saying

Oliver Donnington Rimington-Sneep
COULDN'T and DIDN'T
And WOULD NOT SLEEP

Oliver Who Would Not Sleep by Mara Bergman and Nick Maland is in the Top Ten Picture Books For Overcoming Bedtime Woes.

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