An After Bedtime Story

by Shoham Smith (Author) Einat Tsarfati (Illustrator)

An After Bedtime Story
Reading Level: K − 1st Grade
Little Nina will not go to bed. Not when the adults are having so much fun in the other room without her! Before her exasperated parents can catch up, Nina escapes her bedroom and races through the house, sampling cakes and just generally stirring up trouble. With Nina on the loose, a cordial family party becomes a wild good time, as her aunts and uncles join in the riotous fun. Finally it's time for the guests to leave, and it is bedtime at last--not just for Nina, but for the entire exhausted family.Illustrated with stylishly appealing three-color art, this is a loving, funny portrait of family life--and of what bedtime is often really like.
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Kirkus

A delightful tale for young readers who don’t want to go to bed. (Picture book. 3-8)

Copyright 2016 Kirkus Reviews, LLC Used with permission



Publishers Weekly

Not only is Nina not asleep; she's ready to join the party, emerging from her bedroom in her tiara, frilly skirt, and not much else, in time to greet her parents' guests: "Give Aunt Ruth a kiss goodnight--/ then back to bed you go, all right?" Nina grabs an iced cupcake then, emboldened, clowns for the assembly and tries bathing her doll in the punch bowl ("Get down, young lady! That's not how we act./ You're going to bed this instant, and that's a fact"). No one hears. Instead, the guests join the fun, crawling around on their hands and knees; walk-ons by Nina's toddler brother and the family bulldog add more laughs. In contrast to the mayhem, there's something classic, even elegant about Tsarfati's spreads, which combine the poise of Greek urn paintings with the everyday chaos of life with kids. Though the translated verse can be clunky and some may object to Nina's self-indulgent anarchy, Smith and Tsarfati tap into a rich seam of sleepless parent humor. Clearly, as this Israeli duo proves, limelight-hogging children are an international phenomenon. Ages 5-7. (May)

Copyright 2016 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.

Review quotes

"Tsarfati's lively illustrations fill in Smith's open-ended rhyming couplets by providing witty visual punch lines and capture Nina's boundless energy and impish antics with a minimal color palette. They are New Yorker-stylish, depicting a white family that looks delightfully real, pot bellies and all. A delightful tale for young readers who don't want to go to bed."—Kirkus
Shoham Smith
Shoham Smith studied industrial design at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design at Tel Aviv University. She is the author of collections of short stories and children's books. Smith received the Prime Minister's Prize and is a two-time winner of the ACUM Award for Furthering the Publication of Children's Books. Smith has also won the Devorah Omer Prize and the Lea Goldberg Prize. Smith lives in Tel Aviv with her partner and three children. Eitan Eloa graduated with excellence from the Department of Visual Communication at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design at Tel Aviv University and continues to teach illustration classes there. Eloa Illustrates children's books, graphic novels, editorial illustrations, and illustrated branding. His works have won the Israel Museum Award for Children's Book Illustration, a silver Medal from the American Society of Illustrators, and The Israeli Design Award among others.Ilana Kurshan is an American-Israeli author who lives in Jerusalem. She is the author of Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?: The Four Questions Around the World and If All the Seas Were Ink. The latter won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature in 2018.
Classification
-
ISBN-13
9781419718731
Lexile Measure
-
Guided Reading Level
-
Publisher
Abrams Books for Young Readers
Publication date
May 03, 2016
Series
-
BISAC categories
JUV019000 - Juvenile Fiction | Humorous Stories
JUV010000 - Juvenile Fiction | Bedtime & Dreams
JUV013000 - Juvenile Fiction | Family | General
Library of Congress categories
Humorous stories
Bedtime
Stories in rhyme
JUVENILE FICTION / Family / General (see also
JUVENILE FICTION / Humorous Stories
JUVENILE FICTION / Bedtime & Dreams

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