It has crossed the minds of all babysitters and parents.
“Go the F**K to Sleep,” a new children’s bedtime book by Adam Mansbach, hit bookstores Tuesday and has already earned the top spot on the New York Times bestseller list.
Mansbach, who wrote the book after his restless daughter refused to get some shut eye last year, includes nursery rhyme-style language and illustrations in his work. The hardcover book is already a success, but the audio version, narrated by “Snakes on a Plane” actor Samuel L. Jackson, is quite a hit, too. The recording, which contains swear words, has been removed from YouTube.
“I think at some point, she would look at me when I would come in her room, and she’d say, ‘Go the f*** to sleep, Daddy?’ And I’d say, ‘yeah go the f*** to sleep,’” Jackson says in the video.
Award winning parenting blogger Mir Kamin told The Daily Caller that she “shamelessly loves the audio version,” adding that the book should serve as a joke gift rather than an actual storybook you’d set beside the crib or rocking chair.
“Personally, I see this book becoming the quintessential gag baby shower gift, but I hope parents are chuckling about it amongst themselves rather than reading it to their kids,” Kamin told TheDC.
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But Kamin noted that cussing in front of kids wouldn’t influence them to hit the hay or develop healthy behavioral habits.
“Using this kind of language with tots who refuse to settle down for the night probably only results in ill-timed and embarrassing comments to their grandparents, not more sleep!” Kamin said.
Alice Bradley, another parenting blogger, told TheDC that everyone understands the book’s title.
“The brilliant thing about this book is that we’ve all said it: whether at our kids (when they were too young to understand, naturally), to ourselves, in our minds, whispered in a confessional booth, whatever,” Bradley said.
But Bradley recognizes that the work isn’t actually for children.
“That said, no one’s actually reading it to their kids, are they? If for no other reason than the illicit thrill of hearing all those bad words would excite their weird little minds way too much,” Bradley said. “Then you’d NEVER get them to sleep.”
