Seriously, Just Go to Sleep

The children’s version of the #1 New York Times best-selling classic!

“Now there’s a version, complete with more of the gorgeous, yet weirdly subversive illustrations . . . that you can read to your children . . . The best part? It’s still funny. The rhythms, the plodding rhymes, the illustrations, the clever play on the overused trope of the world at bedtime―they all work together to take Seriously, Just Go to Sleep beyond parody and into the realm where good children’s books belong: things that parents, and children, can honestly come to from different places and enjoy together. I can imagine reading Seriously, Go to Sleep nightly, and even to the point where you’re begging the child to choose something else (the ultimate compliment for a picture book) and yet still finding something to enjoy. It captures a different ‘zeitgeist’ of modern parenting.” ―New York Times

Seriously, Just Go to Sleep is the G-rated, traditional-sized, children’s version of the book every parent has been talking about. Go the F*** to Sleep, the picture book for adults, became a cultural sensation by striking a universal chord for parents. Now, Adam Mansbach and Ricardo Cortés reunite with Seriously, Just Go to Sleep, inviting the children themselves in on the joke. As parents know, kids are well aware of how difficult they can be at bedtime. With Cortés’s updated illustrations (including a cameo appearance by Samuel L. Jackson, who narrated the audio book version of Go the F*** to Sleep) and Mansbach’s new child-appropriate narrative, the book allows kids to recognize their tactics, giggle at their own mischievousness, and empathize with their parents’ struggles―a perspective most children’s books don’t capture. Most important, it provides a common ground for children and their parents to talk about one of the most stressful aspects of parenting.

Seriously, Just Go to Sleep came to be when Mansbach read a highly censored rendition of the original book to his three-year-old daughter, and she recognized herself as the culprit and was delighted. “We were getting a lot of feedback from parents, saying that their kids loved the book―read in an altered form―because they recognized themselves in the character of the mischievous kid who’s winning the bedtime battle, and thought it was hilarious. So we figured we’d do a companion volume that lets kids in on the fun.”

Adam Mansbach is a novelist, screenwriter, humorist, and cultural critic (in addition to having built an obscene fake children's book empire). His books include Rage Is Back, the California Book Award–winning The End of the Jews, and the best sellers Angry Black White Boy and For This We Left Egypt?, cowritten with Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel. Mansbach was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for his screenplay for the Netflix Original Barry, and is currently adapting his middle-grade novel Jake the Fake Keeps It Real for the Disney Channel. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, Esquire, and on National Public Radio's This American Life, the Moth, and All Things Considered.

RICARDO CORTÉS is the #1 New York Times best-selling illustrator of Go the F**k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach and Party: A Mystery, by the acclaimed author Jamaica Kincaid. Cortés has written and illustrated books including Sea Creatures from the Sky and A Secret History of Coffee, Coca & Cola. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, and on CNN, Fox News, and the Late Show with David Letterman. You can see his work at Rmcortes.com, or on Twitter and Instagram at @Rmcortes. His latest work is the updated edition of It’s Just a Plant.