The winning combination of husband and wife team Audrey Wood, author, and Don Wood, illustrator, comes together again in “The Napping House,” a sleepy story written in the style of “The House that Jack Built.”
We start with the house, and in the house is a bed, a nice warm cozy bed. In the bed is a granny, flat on her back and snoring her head off, and in wanders a child to climb in with Granny. He makes himself comfortable and together they snooze, in the cozy bed, in the napping house.
Then comes the dog to fall asleep on top of the child, soon followed by a cat, and then a mouse, all fast asleep and cozy while the rain falls outside. Amazingly enough, all these extra bodies in her bed don’t seem to be disturbing Granny at all.
Then a flea joins the party, to sit on the mouse who is sitting on the cat, who is on top of the dog who’s asleep on the child who is curled up on Granny. Everyone is warm and peaceful.
But then the flea bites the mouse, who frightens the cat, who claws the dog, who jumps on the child, and poor Granny takes the brunt of it, and the bed breaks. No one’s asleep now, but the rain has stopped and there’s a beautiful rainbow over the napping house.
I quite enjoyed the illustrations in this book. While everyone’s asleep, the colors are in muted shades of blue, giving the impression of quiet and sleep. Then as the animals are waking up, the colors become brighter and brighter, until the last page where we see the rainbow, and everything is vivid. It’s a clever subliminal trick to make us think of sleeping and then to wake us up, refreshed. A great book to read to your children at night, you could skip the last few pages and show them how nice and relaxed everyone is while sleeping. Your kids don’t need to know that everyone wakes up in the end!
A cute book from start to finish, be sure to look for this book the next time you’re shopping.
(This book was published by Harcourt Brace and Company in 1984.)
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