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Summary
Summary
In a sleepy sleepy house everything is so sleepy - until music drifts in through an open window. Chairs begin to rock, dishes begin to dance, and a sleepy boy opens his eyes to the revelry of the once-sleepy house. Then, softly, the music drifts out, and everything is sleepy sleepy once more.
With his soothing text and gentle, whimsical illustrations, Uri Shulevitz has created the ultimate sleepy sleepy bedtime story.
So Sleepy Story is a 2006 New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Book of the Year.
Author Notes
Uri Shulevitz is a Caldecott Medal-winning illustrator and author. He was born in Warsaw, Poland, on February 27, 1935. He began drawing at the age of three and, unlike many children, never stopped. The Warsaw blitz occurred when he was four years old, and the Shulevitz family fled. For eight years they were wanderers, arriving, eventually, in Paris in 1947. There Shulevitz developed an enthusiasm for French comic books, and soon he and a friend started making their own. At thirteen, Shulevitz won firstprize in an all-elementary-school drawing competition in Paris's 20th district.
In 1949, the family moved to Israel, where Shulevitz worked a variety of jobs: an apprentice at a rubber-stamp shop, a carpenter, and a dog-license clerk at Tel Aviv City Hall. He studied at the Teachers' Institute in Tel Aviv, where he took courses in literature, anatomy, and biology, and also studied at the Art Institute of Tel Aviv. At fifteen, he was the youngest to exhibit in a group drawing show at the Tel Aviv Museum.
At 24 he moved to New York City, where he studied painting at Brooklyn Museum Art School and drew illustrations for a publisher of Hebrew books. One day while talking on the telephone, he noticed that his doodles had a fresh and spontaneous look--different from his previous illustrations. This discovery was the beginning of Uri's new approach to his illustrations for The Moon in My Room , his first book, published in 1963. Since then he was written and illustrated many celebrated children's books. He won the Caldecott Medal for The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship , written by Arthur Ransome. He has also earned three Caldecott Honors, for The Treasure , Snow and How I Learned Geography . His other books include One Monday Morning , Dawn , and many others. He also wrote the instructional guide Writing with Pictures: How to Write and Illustrate Children's Books . He lives in New York City.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 1-A "sleepy sleepy boy" is fast asleep in his "sleepy sleepy bed" along with everything else in his "sleepy sleepy house" until music comes drifting in, in ever louder tones. Then the child and his surroundings gradually come alive, dance, and shake to the beat, and drift back to sleep as the notes and instruments depart. The brief repetitive text takes a backseat to the whimsical watercolor-and-ink cartoon illustrations. Indeed, a couple of spreads have no words at all. Dark background washes engulf the personified objects as they settle into slumber. With the arrival of notes that become instrument-playing characters, the washes begin to lighten with the slowly awakening household, until the cavorting furnishings are suffused with brilliant oranges and yellows. This transformation is only temporary, however, for with the exodus of the music makers, dusty blues, greens, and grays wrap everyone in sleep once again. Before youngsters themselves nod off, there is much for them to see and enjoy here-dancing dishes that eventually slump over, picture-framed characters with outrageous beards and mustaches, vibrating tables and chairs, a bookcase containing Shulevitz titles, trees and house leaning over in sleep, and more. This is a bedtime bonanza.-Marianne Saccardi, formerly at Norwalk Community College, CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Just as the first snowfall introduced magic in the quiet town of Shulevitz's Snow, here music puts a sleeping household under its spell. The book opens when night falls upon a little house, and sleep overtakes its inhabitants. The artist's choice to anthropomorphize every creature and household item-from the faces on the dishes, to the legs on the table, all portrayed with tightly closed eyes-indicates that nothing is immune to slumber. Text steeped in repetition and alliteration creates a soporific effect ("sleepy cuckoo-clock/ by sleepy dishes/ on sleepy shelves/ and a sleepy cat/ on a sleepy chair"). Muted watercolors in twilight tones reinforce the sense of stillness. With the sudden introduction of music, the house begins to awaken, and color slowly washes across the pages, creating a daybreak effect. The text disappears, and the previously framed illustrations burst into full-bleed paintings. Words seem to be no longer necessary, as the music creates an energy all on its own. But as the action winds down and each object (plus a sleepy boy) returns to sleep, readers will not doubt that this process will inevitably begin again. Much like a child's nighttime routine, this story is an ode to the predictable rhythms yet also the surprising moments that comprise an ordinary day. Ages 3-6. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Preschool) Shulevitz pays homage to earlier artists (Lyonel Feininger, with his personified houses; Picasso in his Blue Period) as he evokes the sense of the surreal latent in the middle of the night. A mesmeric though almost extraneous text (""In a sleepy sleepy house / everything is sleepy sleepy"") captures the feeling of suspended animation in the slumbering household, with all the objects in and residents of the house fast asleep, eyes closed -- table, chair, teacup, and small boy alike. Watercolors in the coolest of colors reinforce the mood; deep, weblike shadows seem to anchor the sleepers to their spots. Suddenly, music wafts in, waking the household. Brash musical notes blowing red-hot trumpet and sax bring color and movement, as two wordless spreads, all angles and bright lights, depict rollicking furniture and dancing dishes. Then the music fades. ""And sleepy boy / falls back to sleep /in a sleepy sleepy house / where sleepy pictures /on sleepy walls / and sleepy dishes / on sleepy shelves / are sleepy / sleepy."" The faces on the personified objects will pull children in as expressions change from peaceful repose to delight and back again. The passive, almost invisible role of the boy may distance some readers but may allow others entrance into the book, letting them watch the wee-hours reveling along with him. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Caldecott Medalist Shulevitz spins a dreamy story of a household at night with a little boy and everything around him asleep. All the familiar items of this home have faces with sleeping eyes: chairs, tables, dishes, toys, curtains--even the light fixture. There's a somber feeling to the initial spreads, with lurking shadows and murky colors. Then a golden beam of music wafts in the window, waking everyone up with dancing notes and blaring horns. The anthropomorphic musical notes dance with the dishes and the furniture for hours and then mysteriously disappear back out the window, returning the household to its somnolent state. The final illustrations show subtle changes wrought by the influence of the music through a warmer palette of blues and greens and smiles on the household items and the moon. Assuredly soporific for snoozing. (Picture book. 3-6) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
PreS. Shulevitz's latest winning picture book evokes the lulling rhythms of Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon 0 (1947) but adds a thrilling animation to a quiet bedtime scene. In a quiet room, "in a sleepy sleepy house where everything is sleepy sleepy," a boy slumbers deeply until music drifts through a window, rousing him (and all the surrounding objects) into joyful midnight revelry. Then the music floats away, and the room settles back into peaceful dreamtime. As in Dawn0 (1974) and Snow 0 (1998), Shulevitz celebrates how the simplest things can be miraculously transformed. Unlike the objects in Goodnight Moon, 0 everything in this room is alive0 with a discernable, expressive face: the dishes, the tables and chairs, the bookcase (filled with Shulevitz's books). The objects all snooze languidly, and then explode into action as the equally animated musical notes,\b \b0 with wild smiles on their round heads, curl and dance through the window. The ink-and-watercolor scenes create an energetic tension between the deep, blue-gray sleepy-time scenes and the rainbow-streaked views of vibrant musical activity. The spare, hypnotically repetitive text and progressively deepening colors will pull preschoolers into the shadowy edges of sleep along with the story's bewildered boy, and they'll feel satisfied to see their suspicions confirmed: the living and the inanimate worlds aren't so separate after all. --Gillian Engberg Copyright 2006 Booklist