Fly like a parrot, sleep like a bear

If you could be any animal, what would you be? Running after a toddler? Would love some more horsepower. Can’t remember what I walked in here for? An elephantine memory would be handy. Another rough night? What I wouldn’t give to hibernate!

A mother and son play out a charming version of this game in Bedtime for Bo, written by Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold, illustrated by Mari Kanstad Johnsen, and translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson (Enchanted Lion Books, 2022).

Easily one of the best picture books I’ve read this year, Bedtime for Bo captures the elusive magic of a perfect night with your child. A night where everyone is connected and the fun and games gradually wind down just in time for sleep.

Mommy and Bo pretend to be different sleeping animals—parrot, walrus, bat—as they move through their bedtime routine together. Mommy meets Bo in his playful mood and helps extend the imaginative game as they bathe, brush, and eventually settle in bed. Skomsvold’s pacing creates a soothing decrescendo to sleep, where Bo can keep playing in dreamland.

Johnsen’s remarkable illustrations owe some Scandinavian inheritance to the great Tove Jansson (creator of the Moomin stories) and yet are distinct. They perfectly balance the surreal and the familiar, capturing the feeling of slowly drifting into a dream from your safe, warm bed.

One of my favorite spreads is early in the book. Bo is rolling around on the couch, wrestling a python among a jumble of other toys and cushions. The home is cozily cluttered with animals, and it is not immediately obvious which are stuffies and which are pets. Here and throughout the book, Johnsen shows us that the toys on the couch, the family cat and dog, the portraits on the wall, and Bo’s imaginings are all equally alive and real to him.

In both pictures and text, the whimsical intermingles with the mundane. Child readers will see themselves in Bo as he tumblesaults on the couch and emerges raisin-fingered from the bath, and they will delight in new worlds as they learn how otters and giraffes fall asleep. It is a lovely book to read with your little animal before they burrow into bed.