Crunch Time! The Nuts: Bedtime at the Nut House by Eric Litwin and Scott Magoon

IT WAS TIME FOR BED, THE DAY WAS DONE.

BUT HAZEL AND WALLY WERE STILL UP AND HAVING FUN.

What else is new? Aren't all kids a little nuts at bedtime?

(Walnut) Wally and (Hazelnut) Hazel can't be bothered by (Chestnut) Mom and keep bouncing on their trampoline, singing

"WE'RE NUTS! WE'RE NUTS! WE'RE NUTS!"

Like all youngsters, they're happy to keep doin' what they're doin', full of wiggles and giggles and all kinds of inventive stalling activities--being "astronuts" ("Houston, we have a praline....") for the "Unnuted States", sailing the seas (on the liner "Titanut")--until Mama Nut eventually cracks down on her little nuts:

MAMA NUT GAVE THEM THE LOOK.

SHE MARCHED THEM UP TO BED AND TUCKED THEM IN TIGHT!

Bedtime is a tough nut to crack and in their nutty collaboration, best-selling author Eric Litwin and illustrator Scott Magoon's The Nuts: Bedtime at the Nut House (Little, Brown and Company, 2014), get down to the kernel of truth in the nightly battle of bedtime, that all little nuts need their rest. Litwin and Magoon crack wise with a few punny names to please slightly older readers and some silly visual jokes that will knock this target audience off their tree as well. Downloads are available of the book's own song for parents and little bedtime delayers, perhaps to lullaby all those little nuts to slumberland.

Pair this one with Sarah Maizes' saga of the queen of sleepytime procrastination, On My Way to Bed (see review here) or Jennifer Adams' Edgar Allan Poe parody, Edgar Gets Ready for Bed: A BabyLit®First Steps Picture Book (see my recent review here).