Why this season's most popular baby-shower gift has an obscene title
The experts are weighing in on how a 32-page humor book with an unprintable title made it to the top of the bestseller lists. Based on my own expert opinion, I鈥檇 like to announce that they鈥檙e wrong.
鈥淕o the [expletive deleted] to Sleep鈥� by Adam Mansbach, featuring a cover that mimics a child鈥檚 board book, hit #1 on Amazon earlier this week, and . 鈥淕o the [expletive deleted] to Sleep鈥� isn't even scheduled for publication until next month. But a PDF, showing the sendup of 鈥済o to sleep, my dear baby鈥� rhymes overlaid with foulmouthed desperation, has gone viral.
The book's publishers describe it as "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." Readers are promised that the book's "profane, affectionate, and radically honest ... verses [will] perfectly capture the familiar 鈥� and unspoken 鈥� tribulations of putting your little angel down for the night.
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has it that the viral PDF hit enough reader funny bones to fuel the book鈥檚 wild ride.
No. I don't think so. I think it's more that news of the book hit enough parents. I have to believe the popularity came for the same reason that Mansbach in the first place, that when the father jokingly posted, 鈥淟ook out for my forthcoming children鈥檚 book, 鈥楪o the 鈥� to Sleep' 鈥� on Facebook, he got such an overwhelming response he had to turn the joke into reality.
Sleep problems, more than anything else I know, drive new parents over to the wrong side of despair. There are reasons why in the parenting book ghetto focus on how to get your child to bed without spending hours every night with either parent or baby in tears. In the middle of those nights, it鈥檚 all about, or, personal confession, just , which sets up . A little black humor at those times would go a long way.
that it was readers who have actually seen the PDF of Mansbach鈥檚 book that caused orders to go over the top, figuring that the mere idea of the subject matter couldn鈥檛 explain its sales figures. 鈥淧iracy, it seems, is what has driven the book's real-world, money-making, flying-off-the-shelves success. The bootleg copy hasn't replaced the actual artifact. It has only served as a sort of free advertising,鈥� the article said.
Nope. No one I know has seen the PDF, yet all over my Facebook and Twitter feeds, friends who have simply read news accounts of the book are announcing that they鈥檙e ordering copies 鈥� for baby showers, for friends who are new parents, for themselves.
For me, my third and last and dearly beloved baby has just finally started sleeping solidly in her crib. But I might want a copy of Mansbach鈥檚 book anyway 鈥� just for posterity. I want to remind myself, in the rose-tinted years to come, that yes, it really was hard 鈥� so hard that we all laughed at the mere idea of a book that dared to be profane about such a topic.
Seattle writer Rebekah Denn blogs at
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