Little Hoot

My little girl loves this book. It is very cleverly written and the characters are very sweet. It's reverses the idea of kids that want to stay up late and not go to sleep. In this case the little owl wants to go to sleep but he has to stay up late like the other owls do. I think my favorite line is when the little owl says when he grows up, he's going to let his kids go to bed as early as they want. Great bedtime story!

I loved Little Pea so much that I was doubtful this book could reach such a high bar...I was surprised to find that I loved it just as much. Such a sweet tale of a little owl wanting to go to bed early and the parents wanting him/her to stay up late. A true delight to read! It even holds my almost 2 year old's attention.

I have to agree with the other reviewers (all 5 stars at this point) and say that this book is delightful. My husband and I were cackling as we read it to our 4-year-old daughter. A very clever story that is simple enough to amuse children and adults. You won't regret reading this book to your child.

This book is so well written, and the illustrations are equally wonderful. We just bought this book and my little girl (almost 3) LOVES it!! I only wish I would have bought it sooner.

If a children's book author were to sit down one day and think, "I'm going to write a bedtime story," there's a possibility that they find themselves in a bit of a muddle. Bedtime stories, like ABC tales, sound relatively simple until you actually sit down and try to write one. Then you begin to think it through. Will this be a story that is actually about going to bed? How do you make it interesting without being SO interesting that it keeps child readers awake rather than sleepy? What is going to make your story any different from the thousands of bedtime picture books already out there? I have seen effective bedtime tales in my day, but few are such perfect little packages as "Little Hoot". It's the newest product from the crackerjack team of Rosenthal and Corace and though it shares some similarities with its predecessor Little Pea, this is one nighttime tale that separates itself from the pack. Here's how a normal day is for Little Hoot. Like most owls he goes to school, plays with his friends, and practices his pondering and staring. That's fine. He's fond of all of that. What he doesn't like, however, is bedtime. Every night Little Hoot wants to go to bed at a reasonable hour like his other non-owl friends, and every night it's the same story. "If you want to grow up to be a wise owl, you must stay up late." On this particular night Little Hoot begs to go to bed but his mom lets him know in no uncertain terms that he must stay up one whole hour before she'll let him sleep. Finally, after counting down the last ten minutes of play, Little Hoot is allowed to go to bed. And before his mother and father can engage him in a drink of water or a bedtime story, "Little Hoot was already fast asleep." The craziest thing about "Little Hoot", and I don't know why I was so surprised by this, was that it actually made me crave sleep. By having a protagonist who's sole goal in this story is to bed down for the night you, the reader, really feel for him. Boy, that bed really does look comfy doesn't it? Author Amy Krouse Rosenthal's tone in this tale is pitch perfect. She twists the reader's expectations perfectly so that child readers may find themselves utterly baffled on a first reading of this tale. They may even be baffled on a second or third re-reading. Eventually, though, I have faith that the young `uns will catch on and find Rosenthal's new take on an old childhood complaint a lot of fun to play with. The dialogue works pretty effectively as well. "Ten more minutes of playing, Mister. And please don't ask me again," will ring true, if slightly skewed, in more than a few ears. I also loved how Little Hoot's ways of keeping awake involved the activities that kids partake of when they themselves are trying to keep from falling asleep. Playing with "swords", building forts, jumping on the bed, that sort of thing. Here's the deal with illustrator Jen Corace... uh... she's awesome. Not very descriptive but whatcha gonna