![Don't Want To Go To Bed? [Nenai Ko Dareda]](https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1345383236m/7360622.jpg)
Don’t Want To Go To Bed? [Nenai Ko Dareda] by Keiko Sena
My rating: 5/5 cats
in the category of “best thing that has happened to me all day long,” this is the clear winner. i received an unexpected package in the mail containing a book sent to me all the way from japan by the booknerd formerly known as bird brian. “but karen, you don’t read japanese!!,” you might proclaim. to which i would retort, “i have so many skills, you couldn’t even begin to count them all!!!” but yeah, it’s true, reading japanese isn’t one of them. however, that doesn’t even matter because not only did bird brian generously send me this book, he also went to the trouble of translating it for me, and of annotating the translation with adorable asides and caveats and anecdotes about his wife’s experience of having this read to her as a little girl.
it’s like a book made of love within a book made of terror.
because yes, there’s a bird in the mix. but that’s not the only terror to be found in between these covers.
it’s a cautionary tale that doles out the same brand of disproportionate punishment for minor naughtiness as Der Struwwelpeter, in which you learn that if you cry, your eyeballs will fall out. in this one, you know what happens to children who don’t sleep through the night??
axis powers, unite and terrify your children!
this is a wonderfully loopy book, if the translation is credible and not just a prank by that sneaky bird-lover to see if i would oh-so-trustingly accept his version and review it accordingly and then he could shout HA HA YOU READ IT WRONG to cause me great shame. but he wouldn’t do that to me, would he? even though he is telling me the title is “the little no-sleepers,” while goodreads is claiming it is much more boringly titled Don’t Want To Go To Bed?
incidentally, this author has also written a book about a cat that gets SO MAD, his face becomes rage-swollen like a balloon.
so i’m pretty sure that it’s not a prank, but just a crazy person writing crazy books to delight young japanese children and old american ladies with wonderful friends living abroad.
thank you forever, brian and chizuru!
read my book reviews on goodreads
