Parents know the bone-deep exhaustion that children can bring (along with all the joy and good stuff etc. etc. of course).

And in honor of Robert Frost’s birthday, we asked our book experts for a twist on the poet’s infamous line: What’s a children’s book that deals with exhaustion, parental or otherwise?

Owls

A Book of Sleep by Il Sung Na talks about how all the forest animals get ready for bed, except for the owl of course! Beautiful illustrations and simple text, perfect for read-aloud. —Alessandra Affinito, Chatham Square

An oldie but goodie: Good-Night Owl by Pat Hutchins. Poor owl is exhausted trying to sleep while all the other birds and animals are chattering. But he gets his revenge that night! —Danita Nichols, Inwood

Little Hoot can’t wait to go to bed like all of his forest friends, but, unfortunately, when you’re an owl you have to stay up “late, late, late.” He counts the minutes before he can go to bed while his parents try to push him more water and bedtime stories. —Jessica Cline, Mid-Manhattan

Bears (& Friends)

The cover of Goodnight Already by Jory John & Benji Davies says it all! Bear needs bed. Now. Too bad his neighbor duck is wide awake and ready to hang out. Poor bear. (And check out the hilarious book trailer!) —Anna Taylor, Children’s Programming

Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson: 

“In a cave in the woods,
a slumbering bear
sleeps through the party
in his very own lair.”

—Maura Muller, Volunteer Office

Mice, Bugs, Birds & Monkeys

If anyone ever asks you what being a parent is like, give them Laura Joffe Numeroff’s If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. This is parenting allegory at its finest. Felicia Bond’s illustrations bring this story of a charming, utterly exhausting mouse to colorful life. The mouse’s remorseless progression of demands mirrors those of energetic toddlers. You’ll even find yourself thinking, “It’s a good thing that mouse is cute ...” —Joshua Soule, Spuyten Duyvil

I’m surprised no one has mentioned Dr. Seuss’ Sleep Book, although there seem to be frighteningly few copies in the system!  This was a childhood favorite in my house, and my mom always read it when she just needed us to go to sleep already! We all know that yawning is contagious, right??  Well, watch what happens when an exhausted little bug shares his big yawn with everyone around him! —Ronni Krasnow, Morningside Heights

All the zoo animals are very tired after making noise all day for the people coming to see them and all they want to do is get some sleep. Unfortunately, the baby beebee bird is wide awake, “beebybobbybeebybobbybeebybobby”, he calls, all night long. They’ll have to work together to keep the baby beebee bird awake during the day so that he will sleep at night. Take your bedtime read aloud to a whole new level with The Baby Beebee Bird by Diane Redfield Massie and illustrations by Steven Kellogg. —Anne Rouyer, Mulberry Street

I’ll throw in Monkey and Me by Emily Gravett. A little girl and her stuffed monkey have such an adventure-filled day that she can’t even finished her last sentence without falling asleep.  The book ends, appropriately, with zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. —Jenny Rosenoff, Mulberry Street

Humans

Bedtime is Canceled and it’s a dream come true! All the children celebrate... until they are too tired to celebrate anymore and need to go to bed. —Emily Lazio, Tompkins Square

Marla Frazee (of Boss Baby renown) has a picture book: Hush, Little Baby. It has the words we all know from the folk song and also has illustrations of the parents at their wits’ end providing everything they can for their wee one. —Jenny Baum, Jefferson Market

The first one that comes to mind is a modern classic by Adam Mansbach that deals with parental exhaustion. It’s not really a children’s book, though, and its title contains a word I suspect would not be welcome in the Library’s recommendation pages. However, there is now a G-rated version, titled Seriously, Just Go to Sleep, with similar illustrations by Ricardo Cortés, but a thoroughly bowdlerized text for reading to the kiddies. (For the record, the Library also has the original.) —Kathie Coblentz, Special Collections

Oooh, how about Baby Danced the Polka by Karen Beaumont? A pair of polka-loving parents try to get their baby down for naptime on the farm. This one’s got lift-the-flaps and great rhymes like “while Papa starched his long johns and Mama stitched her coat, Baby boogie-woogied with the frisky little... Goat!” —Susie Heimbach, Mulberry Street

All Creatures

Just Go to Bed by Mercer Mayer is a Little Critters classic. Little Critter resists his father’s suggestions to go to sleep as he acts like a cowboy, zookeeper, space cadet, bunny and more. His father patiently ushers him through bath time, pajamas, snack time while getting ready for bed. Finally his dad says, “Just go to bed!” After some push back from Little Critter protesting, “But I’m a bunny and bunnies don’t sleep in a bed,” he finally falls asleep. Written for both children and parents to sympathize with. —Morgan O’Reilly, Aguilar

Who wouldn’t want to be awake when all of the adults are fast asleep! In Tove Jansson’s Moominland Midwinter, the family is deep asleep in their winter hibernation when young Moomintroll wakes up all alone in the frozen darkness of an arctic winter. What follows is the stuff of dreams (and nightmares). After boldly exploring the natural fears of the young Moomin who is witnessing a world never before experienced by his kind (and therefore not in any story he has ever heard), the ending brings hope through the forged bonds of friendship and the promise of spring. —Virginia Bartow, Special Collections

Shel Silverstein’s “The Nap Taker.”  The speaker of this poem takes a nap, and is promptly whisked away to another world, forced to stand trial, and is accused by a judge of taking a nap... that belongs to another child named Bonnie Bowlingbrook:

“She hasn’t slept in quite some time
Just see her eyelids flap.
She’s tired and drowsy—cranky, too,
‘Cause guess who took her nap?”

—Christina Lebec, Bronx Library Center

All images from the George Arents Collection, in NYPL's Digital Collections.

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Staff picks are chosen by NYPL staff members and are not intended to be comprehensive lists. We'd love to hear your ideas too, so leave a comment and tell us what you’d recommend. And check out our Staff Picks browse tool for more recommendations!