The Baby Who Wouldn't Go to Bed - Helen Cooper

This book is one of our latest purchases - we had to buy a copy as we had to keep borrowing the copy from the local library as my son was asking for it to be read to him every night without fail - we daren't take it back! You can't get much more of a recommendation than that! I will, however, try to give you a parents' guide here whilst incorporating my three year old's perspective. **Who's it for?** As I said, my son's three and he loves it, but I think it will be a firm favourite for years yet, and I can see him reading it himself when he's older. You could read it to a younger child, but just have a look at the illustrations yourself first ...

Mother says “bedtime!”, the baby says “no!” and roars off in his toy car, determined to stay up all night. On his travels he encounters his toys (in enlarged and animated form) which all tell him they are too tired to play and it’s time to go to sleep. One by one they all doze off – even his car stops and dozes off – and the baby is the only one left awake in a sleeping world. But there is one person who hasn’t gone to sleep, who comes to carry the (by now) tired baby off to bed through a fascinatingly illustrated landscape of familiar, bedtime-associated objects. The book is exquisitely illustrated in Helen ...

If you've ever tried to put a young child to bed in summer, and been told "No, it's still light!" then this is the book for you. It tells the story of a toddler who refuses to go to bed because it's light and decides he's going to stay up all night. He drives off in his little pedal car, trying to find someone to play with. First a tiger, then a troop of soldiers, a train and a band of musicians all tell him they are tired and off to bed. Eventually the musicians play a lullaby, the sun sets, and both the musicians and the car fall asleep leaving the baby to push the car home all alone; until out of the darkness his mother appears and takes him ...