The Dreams I'll Dream Tonight

by Sarah Ruhl, Sally Deng (Illustrator)

Overview

From celebrated two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, playwright, poet, and professor Sarah Ruhl comes a cozy sweet dreams guide book wherein a child empowers themself to fight their nightmares with whimsical images of love and comfort.

Read just one more book to me
The way you always do
Then I won’t dream of dragons.
Instead, I’ll dream of you.

When bad dreams and scary things threaten a child’s peaceful sleep, they ask for one more bedtime story to fill their head with kittens, kisses, and the love they have for their family.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781534453302
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Publication date:	07/22/2025
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	40
File size:	168 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Sarah Ruhl is a playwright, essayist, and poet. Her fifteen plays include In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play), The Clean House, and Eurydice. She has been a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Tony Award nominee, and the recipient of the MacArthur “genius” Fellowship. Her plays have been produced on- and off-Broadway, around the country, internationally, and have been translated into many languages. Her book 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write was a New York Times Notable Book. Her other books include Smile: A Memoir, Letters from Max, with Max Ritvo, and 44 Poems for You. The Dreams I’ll Dream Tonight is her debut picture book. She has received the Steinberg Playwright Award, the Samuel French Award, the Feminist Press Under 40 Award, the National Theater Conference Person of the Year Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, a Whiting Award, a Lily Award, and a PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for mid-career playwrights. She teaches at the Yale School of Drama, and she lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Tony Charuvastra, who is a child psychiatrist, and their three children. You can read more about her work at SarahRuhlPlaywright.com.

Sally Deng creates art for magazines, newspapers, books, and more in her Los Angeles studio. She is the author-illustrator of Skyward: The Story of Female Pilots in WWII and Warrior Princess: The Story of Khutulun and the illustrator of The Dreams I’ll Dream Tonight by Sarah Ruhl. She was selected by Forbes 30 Under 30 for the 2020 Art & Style list and was named a Young Guns 16 winner by The One Club for Creativity. Her art has been recognized and exhibited in galleries across the United States.

Editorial Reviews

"A very welcome addition to the bedtime-story canon."

Kirkus Reviews

"Children will enjoy reading or listening to the words and illustrations. Additionally, this title will help tame those bedtime woes of dreaded bad dreams and help turn it into a positive time for all."

School Library Journal

"Sweet dreams replace would-be nightmares in this surrealistically reassuring bedtime book."

Publishers Weekly

2025-03-08
Two-time Pulitzer finalist Ruhl offers youngsters a playbook for a good night’s sleep.

In text addressed to a parent, a child offers ideas for warding off unpleasant dreams and enjoying good ones. The youngster proposes that the parent “read just one more book to me the way you always do. Then I won’t dream of dragons. Instead, I’ll dream of you.” Smart kid. In fact, this child already seems to know how to conjure up agreeable nighttime images: “Tonight I won’t have nightmares. No bad dreams for me. Instead, I’m going to dream about a hippo sipping tea.” Throughout this soothing narrative, the protagonist delivers reassuring ideas, expressed via bouncy, rhythmic verses that evoke genial, sometimes comical reveries. Importantly, the child demonstrates an ability to conquer images that might otherwise prove fearsome: “And I won’t dream of monsters hiding by that chair. That monster was a kitten—his tail was in the air!” At one point, the child decides to “choose to dream about…a dream inside a dream”—an empowering statement indeed. As morning peeps through the window, the young narrator slips off to sleep, saying, “I’m going to dream about…” This sweet book will help embolden dreamers to overcome nighttime apprehensions; kids will welcome repeat readings. Employing crayonlike textures and eye-catching imagery, the soft, muted illustrations match the text perfectly. Parent and child are pale-skinned.

A very welcome addition to the bedtime-story canon. (page for readers to write their own dreams)(Picture book. 3-7)

Kirkus Reviews