By: Adam Mansbach, Ricardo Cortes (Illustrator)

Hardcover

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• Read more about the title as it was featured in the Booktopia Blog.

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Go the F**k to Sleep is a bedtime book for parents who live in the real world, where a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don’t always send a toddler sailing blissfully off to dreamland.

Profane, affectionate, and radically honest, California Book Award-winning author Adam Mansbach’s verses perfectly capture the familiar—and unspoken—tribulations of putting your little angel down for the night. In the process, they open up a conversation about parenting, granting us permission to admit our frustrations, and laugh at their absurdity.

With illustrations by Ricardo Cortés, Go the F**k to Sleep is beautiful, subversive and pants-wettingly funny—a book for parents new, old and expectant. You probably should not read it to your children.

Praise for Go the F**k to Sleep:

The language? WTF! This hilarious, politically incorrect book is totally correct about the feelings of sleepless, brain-dead parents.
— Mem Fox

A children’s book for grown-ups! I really did laugh out loud—hilarious!
— David Byrne

Total genius.
— Jonathan Lethem, father of two, author of Motherless Brooklyn

A children's book for grown-ups! I really did laugh out loud--hilarious!
— David Byrne, father of one, musician, artist

This is the most honest children's book ever written. And it's f*cking hilarious.
— A.J. Jacobs, father of three, author of The Year of Living Biblically

I wish this book had been around during my daughter's overly protracted sleep rituals! Finally, someone tells it like it really is. This is no-guilt funny and a godsend!
— Cristina Garcia, mother of one, author of The Lady Matador's Hotel

Go the F**k to Sleep is the secret anthem of tired parents everywhere. Adam Mansbach's homage to the tropes of bedtime stories is pitch perfect, and Ricardo Cortes's stunning illustrations will keep grown-ups and kids alike returning to these pages again and again!
— Bliss Broyard, author of One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life

About the Author

Adam Mansbach's novels include The End of the Jews, winner of the California Book Award, and the best-selling Angry Black White Boy, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2005. His fiction and essays have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Believer, Granta, the Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. He is the 2010-2011 New Voices Professor of Fiction at Rutgers University. His daughter, Vivien, is three.

Ricardo Cortes has illustrated books about marijuana, electricity, the Jamaican bobsled team, and Chinese food. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly, New York Magazine, the Village Voice, the San Francisco Chronicle, and on the O'Reilly Factor and CNN. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, where he is working on a book about the history of Coca-Cola and cocaine.

In The Press

Praise from booksellers for Go the Fuck to Sleep by Adam Mansbach, illustrated by Ricardo Cortes

"This book is what has been missing from the parenting section of every bookstore in America. It provides some much-needed irreverence in a realm (parenting) that can be prone to taking itself way too seriously, and I think its honesty will provide relief to a lot of sleep-deprived parents. And the juxtaposition of words and pictures cracked me up when I first saw it, and continues to every time I think about it. My kids aren't born yet, but the title of this book has become a catchphrase in my household anyway, and I feel a little less intimidated knowing Go the Fuck to Sleep will be in my arsenal of bedtime books (presumably before the kid learns to talk). This is yet another reason why I admire Adam Mansbach's writing, though it's the last thing I would have expected." -- Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, coowner, Greenlight Bookstore (Brooklyn, NY)

"That is one of the greatest things I have ever read in my entire life." -- Melissa Posten, Pudd'nHead Books (St. Louis, MO)

"O my god, I love it. It's gorgeous and now I don't feel so alone." -- Nikki Furrer, Owner, Pudd'nHead Books (St. Louis, MO)

"As a bookseller and father of twins, I greatly appreciate the addition of this literary tool to my bookselling and parenting arsenal. The juxtaposition of the saccharine drawings and the achingly honest verse is sure to pull on the heart strings, or at least tickle the funny bone, of parents everywhere." -- Pete Mulvihill, Green Apple Books (San Francisco, CA)

"I absolutely love this!!" -- Amie Mechler-Hickson, Boswell Books (Milwaukee, WI)

"I love it! Perfect for the earnest, well-intentioned, but sleep-deprived parent. I'd recommend it for a fun baby shower present too. For many parents (and I was one), getting the child to sleep is the last battle in a long hard war of the day. Anything that can make us laugh about it is very, very welcome." -- Linda Bubon, Women & Children First (Chicago, IL)

"Essential reading for any parent whose sanity has teetered on the brink. Adam Mansbach has done it again! The text is hilarious. Ricardo Cortes's illustrations are perfect." -- Peter Maravelis, Events Director, City Lights Booksellers (San Francisco, CA)

"Go the Fuck to Sleep is the perfect picture book for the parent with five minutes (and it's only five minutes, ever, forever) to unwind. Plus, it's pretty effing funny." -- Tom Flynn, 57th Street Books (Chicago, IL)

"The really subversive threat here is Cortes's parody of children's book illustrations, rendered completely perverse here by the juxtaposition of the almost-photorealistic and the textured depth of his art. This is a phenomenal book . . ." -- Jeff Waxman, 57th Street Books (Chicago, IL)

"If only my parents had this book when I was growing up, I would have gotten more sleep and become smart enough to be a lawyer or doctor instead of a fucking bookstore owner. I will order thousands of copies to make sure my customers don't make the same mistakes." -- Christine Onorati, Word Bookstore (Brooklyn, NY)

"Do you know how many of my f**king friends are going to love this book? Too many to f**king count." --Nick Petrulakis, father of two, Manager of Books Inc. (Alameda, CA)

"Hell yeah!" -- Jim Harris, Prairie Lights Bookstore (Iowa City, IA)

"Adults have always loved children's books--the books they grew up with along with the new ones with their well-imagined storytelling and stunning illustrations. But there is a third type of children's book which adults turn to: books written for adults in picture book format. The latest in this less-publicized genre is Go the F*** to Sleep. Artfully written poems and beautiful illustrations combine to graphically articulate the frustrations of trying to get a child to go to sleep. The imaginative range and verbal cleverness equal the most favorite children's books: just what our childish adult hearts desire." -- John Evans, coowner, Diesel, A Bookstore (3 California locations)

"Go the Fuck to Sleep is a truly brilliant bedtime story, one that is bound to become a fucking classic!" -- Margarita Shalina, St. Mark's Bookshop (New York, NY)

The cats nestle close to their kittens,
The lambs have laid down with the sheep.
You’re cozy and warm in your bed, my dear.
Please go the f**k to sleep.

The windows are dark in the town, child.
The whales huddle down in the deep.
I’ll read you one very last book if you swear
You’ll go the f**k to sleep.

The eagles who soar through the sky are at rest
And the creatures who crawl, run, and creep.
I know you’re not thirsty. That’s bullshit. Stop lying.
Lie the f**k down, my darling, and sleep.

ISBN: 9781921758843
ISBN-10: 1921758848
Audience: General
For Ages: 18+ years old
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 32
Published: 11th July 2011