Sleep! Sweet Sleep: Click, Clack, Good Night by Doreen Cronin

IT WAS NIGHTTIME ON THE FARM. EVERYONE WAS TIRED.

Farmer Brown was drowsing in his chair. The cows were weary. The sheep were sleepy. The chickens were snoozy. Everyone was ready to hit the hay (real or metaphorical), for the night. Everyone is ready, except. . . one.

DUCK IS NOT READY FOR BED.

Farmer Brown sings some lullabies. He reads Duck a story and discusses the editorials in the newspaper, turns on the white noise, puts on a shadow puppet show on the wall, turns off the light, and is soon sound asleep.

DUCK IN THE DARK IS WIDE AWAKE.

Duck tries to curl up with the cows, but the cow stalls are too crowded. He tries stretching out with the sheep, but their wool is too soft. The nightlight in the chicken coop is too bright. Duck goes outside the barn, where the moonlight is just right and settles down by the pond.

"BA BURP! BA BURP!"

"CHIT CHAT CHITTER! CHI CHAT CHITTER!"

The frogs in the pond and the bats in the tree above it are wide awake, and now so is Duck.

Duck relocates his nocturnal activities to the farmhouse. He knows where Farmer Brown keeps the sandwich makin's and the hot sauce, so he fixes himself a cheese on whole wheat with a spicy spritz for a midnight snack. Now that his stomach is full, Duck begins to think about turning in. And he knows just the right place.

FARMER BROWN'S MATTRESS IS FIRM, HIS PAJAMAS ARE SOFT, AND DUCK CLOSES HIS EYES AT LAST.

Everyone on the farm, even Duck, is now deep in dreamland--except for Farmer Brown, in the Caldecott-Award winning Doreen Cronin's Click, Clack, Good Night (A Click Clack Book) (Atheneum Books, 2020). Winner of the Caldecott Award for the first book in this series, Click, Clack, Moo Cows That Type, illustrator Betsy Lewin's endearingly droll farm animals and long-suffering Farmer Brown are in good form in this tenth book in the series starring the quirky insomniac quacker, Duck.

Boasts Kirkus Reviews, "Bucolic bedtime done right."

For more down-on-the-farm fun by Cronin, Lewin, and Co., see all my reviews here