By Martin Waddell
Little Bear can't sleep because the dark around the bed is too dark, and Big Bear keeps fetching bigger and bigger lanterns until there's nothing left to fetch but the moon.
It's bedtime in the Bear Cave. Big Bear tucks Little Bear in and settles down to read, and then a small voice says it can't sleep. Why not? Because of the dark. So Big Bear fetches the tiniest lantern and puts it beside the bed. It isn't enough. Big Bear fetches a bigger one, and then the biggest lantern of all, and the cave glows, and still that small voice says the dark is out there, all around, and it's too dark. Big Bear finally puts the book down, picks Little Bear up, and carries the whole worry outside into the night, where the moon is up and the stars are out and the dark turns out to have something in it after all. Little Bear falls asleep on the way back in.
This is the one on the shelf you can read at lights-out with the lamp already low. Nothing appears in the dark, because the whole book takes the position that the dark is simply dark and that a small creature is allowed to mind it. What your child watches, over and over, is a grown-up who does not sigh, does not explain, and does not stop coming back. For a child who has been getting out of bed for three weeks straight, the comfort is less about the moon at the end and more about Big Bear standing up the fourth time.