Go The F**k To Sleep
by Adam Mansbach
illustrations by Ricardo Cortes
This book is genius, pure and simple. There's a reason it became an instant bestseller. Disguised as a children's book, this book is not for the brats, it's for the suffering parents.
This is a short and hilarious manifesto for every parent who has endured all those nights of their precious spawn refusing to head off to slumberland. "The cubs and the lions are snoring, wrapped in a big snugly heap.
How come you can do all this other great s**t but you can't lie the f**k down to sleep?" Every parent has asked this important question and there are hundreds more in this city alone that will be asking that very question late tonight or in the early hours, when the darkness fills the room but they can't get some rest because their child refuses to go first.
As babies and toddlers, they impress us with their growing skill and knowledge. We brag about them to our family and friends. So why do they rob us of our sleep? And then our guilt creeps in.
"The flowers doze low in the meadows and high on the mountains so steep. My life is a failure, I'm a s**tty-ass parent. Stop f**king with me, please, and sleep."
Followed by our unconditional surrender to a child with far deeper energy reserves than ours and then success! You have your life back. But don't count on it lasting. This book is not anti-child, it does not condone violence.
It is an honest but still funny portrayal, with some of the cursing we've always wanted to give to our little brats, of the begging, the pleading, the negotiating, the frustration, the anger and the fatigue parents can have when it's bedtime but the little one just won't go.
Go The F**k To Sleep is in the adult literature section of the Prince George Public Library.
-- Reviewed by Neil Godbout, the communications coordinator at the Prince
George Public Library
Bellfield Hall, Or, The Observations Of Miss Dido Kent
by Anna Dean
Bellfield Hall is the first in a series of wonderfully detailed historical mystery novels. It opens with Dido Kent, a genteel spinster, writing a letter to her sister to acquaint her with some disturbing news.
A woman has been discovered dead in the garden of the house where Dido is staying. Could anything be more horrible? Through a series of letters from Miss Dido Kent to her sister, we learn that she was summoned to Bellfield Hall by her niece, Catherine, who became completely distraught when her fianc deserted her at their engagement party.
Miss Dido, who was partially responsible for raising poor orphaned Catherine as a child, takes the position of beloved aunt and comforts Catherine while assuring her that she will uncover why the young man so basely deserted his bride-to-be.
It is during the process of dealing with familial issues that a strange woman's body is discovered on the grounds of Bellfield Hall - and thus Miss Dido Kent has a second enigma to occupy her clever mind.
The lord and lady of the manor would rather the matter did not get abroad and besmirch their reputation, but our genteel spinster cannot let wrong prevail, no matter how distasteful the subject may be.
This novel is set during the Regency period and Miss Dido Kent immediately reminds one of both Jane Austen and Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. She is bound by the same conventions as Austen's characters typically are and thus cannot sleuth like a modern day detective.
On the other hand, like Miss Marple, she is a woman ignored by other characters due to her age and unassuming position and this allows Miss Dido to observe, converse, and deduce facts all while keeping her hands busy with useful needlework. Anna Dean's writing is excellent in this novel.
There is plenty of dry wit and social satire that fans of Jane Austen will appreciate, and those who love Miss Marple will look forward to seeing how the protagonist's attention to details and knowledge of human nature comes in to play.
The plot for this first novel is somewhat weak, however, in that it has several storylines that require the reader to suspend disbelief a little too much.
In a time period where being married was the primary goal of a young woman's life, for example, how can characters like Sophia and Amelia Harris be explained?
Would people of that era been quite so open or accepting about the Colonel's romantic interests? There is more than one mystery in this novel and while readers may be able to solve one of them before Miss Dido Kent does, some particularly good red herrings will obscure the solutions to the others until the end.
Bellfield Hall is a fair mystery book set in the Regency era and Anna Dean's writing and plot improves greatly with her second installation in the series, known as A Gentleman Of Fortune.
Both Bellfield Hall and A Gentleman Of Fortune, Or, The Suspicions Of Miss Dido Kent by Anna Dean are available at the Prince George Public Library in the adult mystery fiction section.
-- Reviewed By Rachel Huston, Marketing & Development Assistant at the
Prince George Public Library
