Boy, that bed really does look comfy doesn’t it? Author Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s tone in this tale is pitch perfect.
By having a protagonist who’s sole goal in this story is to bed down for the night you, the reader, really feel for him. The craziest thing about "Little Hoot", and I don’t know why I was so surprised by this, was that it actually made me crave sleep. And before his mother and father can engage him in a drink of water or a bedtime story, "Little Hoot was already fast asleep." Finally, after counting down the last ten minutes of play, Little Hoot is allowed to go to bed. "If you want to grow up to be a wise owl, you must stay up late." On this particular night Little Hoot begs to go to bed but his mom lets him know in no uncertain terms that he must stay up one whole hour before she’ll let him sleep. Every night Little Hoot wants to go to bed at a reasonable hour like his other non-owl friends, and every night it’s the same story. What he doesn’t like, however, is bedtime. Like most owls he goes to school, plays with his friends, and practices his pondering and staring. Here’s how a normal day is for Little Hoot. It’s the newest product from the crackerjack team of Rosenthal and Corace and though it shares some similarities with its predecessor Little Pea, this is one nighttime tale that separates itself from the pack. Will this be a story that is actually about going to bed? How do you make it interesting without being SO interesting that it keeps child readers awake rather than sleepy? What is going to make your story any different from the thousands of bedtime picture books already out there? I have seen effective bedtime tales in my day, but few are such perfect little packages as "Little Hoot". Bedtime stories, like ABC tales, sound relatively simple until you actually sit down and try to write one. If a children’s book author were to sit down one day and think, "I’m going to write a bedtime story," there’s a possibility that they find themselves in a bit of a muddle.
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