The Napping House Book

Well, since for some reason several people are being nice enough to like my non-review, I'll just say there are probably several core books in any house that are read in the "formative" years when you are trying to figure out how to make the little urchins happy and/or get them to sleep, books you wear out, ripped and torn and ragged, spattered with baby food and milk and vomit, books that are indistinguishable from your parenting years and this is one of mine, one I look back with a kind of sweet longing, in spite of the fact there might at the time been partly desperation: "will he for the love of god not sleep?" But this is funny, silly, one of those where each occupant of a house piles on to the sleeping Gramma until the bed breaks (see James Thurber's "The Night the Bed Fell,") and all Holy Heck (children are involved here, now) breaks loose. No napping, henceforth, but certain smiles ensue.

I stop to ask my three teenagers, playing Monopoly as I write this during the deepening Coronavirus crisis, and ask them, "You remember The Napping House?!" and they cry out "Yes, I remember when the cat jumps on and screeches!" "Everything is all peaceful and a cat goes to sleep on a dog and then a mouse. . ." "The gnat bites the mouse that wakes the cat that wakes the dog and so suddenly no one is napping!"

You know, it's a pretty good life after all. Or can be!