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| A drowsy, yawny, dreamy, doze-filled bedtime
classic of Charlotte's gets its third new life |
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 Originally published in 1958 by the company Lothrop, Lee, and
Shepherd, with illustrations by
Vladimir Bobri, Sleepy Book was subsequently brought out by Harper &
Row with pictures by Ilse Plume (the Plume cover, right), then reissued a third time in 2001 by HarperCollins with simple, vibrant illustrations by Stefano
Vitale (the Vitale cover, below left).
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Thus
this delicious,
timeless, floating paean to sleepiness has thus long outlived its original
publisher, Lothrop, and outlasted two name changes of its second.
Today, Sleepy Book --- its cover by Vitale shows a small boy dozing on a book,
which rests on a cloud puffy as a down comforter --- looks fresh and new but is
as a soporific as
ever. Charlotte's serene, simple language floats young
readers through the ways animals, birds, and insects sleep --- bears "in /
their / dark / caves / the long/ winter / through", moths "with
wings / folded together / they look like / little / white leaves / on walls /
and windows / and screens".
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Where did Charlotte get the
idea for Sleepy Book?
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 Charlotte says she can't quite remember how she came to write
Sleepy Book.
"Someone, I think Jean George, mentioned to
me that horses sleep standing up. I never thought about it as a book but
later someone, maybe Crescent, mentioned fish sleeping with eyes open, and it
began to form for me.
" (Left, Vitale's brilliant tropical fish snooze among
the seaweed, eyes wide open, while Ilsa Plume's golden koi, right, doze beneath
water lilies)
"But maybe it had its origins even earlier. Maybe it was thinking about both
Crescent, then Ellen, and Steve, my daughter and son, staring up at
me wide awake when I hoped they were about to go to sleep, that may
have given me the idea. Also, I remember Jupie (Jupiter, the family Weimaraner
in the early '50's) wanting to sleep near Crescent/Ellen's crib, and Cleo (the family
poodle in the 60's) wanting to sleep near Steve... |
| "But maybe the idea just
popped into my head one day....who knows?" |
| Who knows indeed? But as Charlotte has said many times, her books are double or
triple exposures: it could have been all these things laid over each
other. |
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