By Sandra Boynton
A boatload of Boynton's goofy animals do the whole bedtime routine together — bath, pajamas, teeth, and a bit of exercise before bed — in a rhyme that winds down to lights out.
The sun goes down, and on a big boat a crew of round, silly Boynton animals gets ready for bed. They take a bath, hang up their towels, find their pajamas, brush and brush and brush their teeth, and then, because it's a Boynton book, do a little exercise, which is the joke your child will demand every night. Then the rocking of the boat carries them all off to sleep. It's short, it bounces along in easy rhyme, and it does the thing every tired parent wants a bedtime book to do, which is walk a small child gently through the exact steps toward lights out.
Sandra Boynton knows that a bedtime book has a job, which is to actually help the settling, and this one is basically the routine set to a beat. Naming the steps a child already does, the bath and the teeth and the pajamas, makes the whole run-up to sleep feel friendly and predictable, and the one goofy exercise break keeps it from being a lecture. It's funny enough for the grown-up reading it for the four-hundredth time and calm enough to hand a wired toddler right before lights out. A baby-shower staple that earns its place on the shelf by being the one that gets reached for on the hard nights.