Wake Up, Sleepyhead!

The comic perils of somnolence are the subject of two short poems and a parable by the late Kipnis, paired with rollicking cartooning by debut illustrator Weiner. In the first story, nothing awakens pink-skinned, wild-haired Jake—neither a brass band nor the fire department flooding his room (“The firemen depart, defeated/ ‘We too give up,’ the band conceded”)—except, that is, his mother’s honey cake. The middle poem centers on a late-rising girl, Sleepyhead, who seems unlikely to make it to school on time despite her extended family’s best efforts: “Father puts on Sleepy’s shoes,/ And doggy pulls the laces through.” And the third, a prose mash-up of Aesop and “The Little Red Hen,” tells of three lazy brothers who get their comeuppance. The tellings can skew simplistic, but Weiner’s visual characterizations are an unalloyed delight. With a sinewy line, an eye for domestic detail, and a sly sense of color, the artist conjures up a cornucopia of generations, body types, and personalities, all marvelously alive and specific. Ages 6–8. [em](Aug.) [/em]