Once Upon a Time, the End (Asleep in 60 Seconds)

by Geoffrey Kloske, Barry Blitt (Illustrator)

Overview

Once upon a time
there was a grown-up
looking for a book
with very short bedtime stories
for a kid who wouldn't go to sleep.
So the grown-up picked up this book
and read this flap
and took the book home
and read it out loud
and they both laughed
and fell fast asleep
fast.
Just like you.
The end.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780689866197
Publisher:	Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	10/01/2005
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.30(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Geoffrey Kloske is a book editor. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Barry Blitt’s illustrations have appeared on more than eighty New Yorker covers and have also graced the pages of The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly. He is the illustrator of Once Upon a Time, the End (Asleep in 60 Seconds) by Geoffrey Koske and The Adventures of Mark Twain by Huckleberry Finn by Robert Burleigh, as well as other picture books. He lives in Roxbury, Connecticut.

What People are Saying About This

Maira Kalman

Smart and funny and beautiful and pithy. I really love it and I'm jealous.

Editorial Reviews

"Smart and funny and beautiful and pithy. I really love it and I'm very jealous."
— Maira Kalman

"Better than Children's Benadryl when it's cocktail hour and the kid won't go to sleep."
— Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket)

From the Publisher

A very quick retelling of many nursery classics is the result when a tired father attempts to get his child to sleep faster by skipping a few words here and there. The Three Little Pigs suddenly become just two, while Little Red Riding Hood becomes a staccato poem: "Small girl / Red hood / Big wolf / In the woods." Hints from father to child abound, until most of the endings turn out to be slumber-related: "Is there a pea under your bed? Then what's your excuse? Go to bed." Making no headway, he shortens even further and steps up the hints-the old lady in the shoe sold her kids to the zoo when they wouldn't go to bed. Meanwhile, Blitt's illustrations must keep up with the furious pace. His simple watercolors in subdued colors manage to pack a lot of plot into a small space without seeming too busy. Readers leave the duo face down on the bed making Zzzz's, while books with their pages cut in half litter the room. Plenty of laughs for all those children who beg for "just one more story" before bed-and a great chuckle for their parents. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews