Stop that yawn! by Caron Levis, illustrated by LeUyen Pham

This wild ride of a bedtime story is an homage to one of my favorite books, In the Night Kitchen, features the awesome art of LeUyen Pham, and basically was designed for me (and many others) to fall in love immediately.

Gabby Wild is tired of bedtime and living in Sleepytown. So her Granny packs them up into Gabby's bed and they set out on an exciting journey to... Never Sleeping City! In this exciting place, populated by anthropomorphous animals, flashing neon signs, and a variety of humans, there's always something going on. Opera, carnival, ice cream, it's wonderful! But then, as they're riding the ferris wheel Granny lets a yawn escape! Despite Gabby's desperate efforts to contain the yawn, "Grit your teeth, seal your lips, we have to stop that...YAWN" the yawn quickly spreads across Never Sleeping City and even to the readers! Finally, even Gabby succumbs and finds herself back in her bed, fast asleep and dreaming of new adventures.

Although the story delivers a nod to Sendak, it's wholly new and its own. The brisk text has a contemporary beat and mixes in the current trend of interactive books. Pham's art shows a bustling city, peopled with Sendak-like animals in elaborate costumes, but she also adds her own sweet touches from Gabby's beaded hair to Granny's tennis shoes and the old radiator in their small apartment. This is a much more diverse and contemporary world than Sendak's, but it still has all the charm of an imaginary city.

Verdict: Read this at storytime, to reluctant kids at bedtime, or just for fun any time of the day! I hope this will become a modern classic; it certainly deserves it.

ISBN: 9781481441797; Published October 16, 2018 by Atheneum; Borrowed from another library in my consortium