Go the F**k to Sleep: One of Reader’s Digest’s ‘25 Funniest Books of All Time’

Adam Mansbach

Jul 2011 · Text Publishing

About this eBook

The international bestseller, a gift book for parents that will have them laughing even as they cry.

Go the F**k to Sleep is a bedtime book for parents who live in the real world, where a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don’t always send a toddler sailing blissfully off to dreamland.

Profane, affectionate, and radically honest, California Book Award-winning author Adam Mansbach’s verses perfectly capture the familiar—and unspoken—tribulations of putting your little angel down for the night. In the process, they open up a conversation about parenting, granting us permission to admit our frustrations and laugh at their absurdity.

With illustrations by Ricardo Cortés, Go the F**k to Sleep is beautiful, subversive and pants-wettingly funny—a book for parents new, old and expectant. You should probably not read it to your children.

Adam Mansbach’s novels include The End of the Jews, winner of the California Book Award, and the best-selling Angry Black White Boy, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2005. His fiction and essays have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Believer, Granta, the Los Angeles Times and many other publications. He is the 2010–11 New Voices Professor of Fiction at Rutgers University, New Jersey. His daughter, Vivien, is three.

Ricardo Cortés has illustrated books about marijuana, electricity, the Jamaican bobsled team and Chinese food. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly, New York Magazine, the Village Voice, the San Francisco Chronicle, and on ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ and CNN. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he is working on a book about the history of Coca-Cola and cocaine.

SAMPLE:

The cats nestle close to their kittens,
The lambs have laid down with the sheep.
You’re cozy and warm in your bed, my dear.
Please go the f**k to sleep.

The windows are dark in the town, child.
The whales huddle down in the deep.
I’ll read you one very last book if you swear
You’ll go the f**k to sleep.

PRAISE:

‘A new Bible for weary parents’ New York Times

‘The language? WTF! This hilarious, politically incorrect book is totally correct about the feelings of sleepless, brain-dead parents.’ Mem Fox

‘There might be some parents who don’t relate to this book. But not many.’ Noni Hazlehurst

‘A children’s book for grown-ups! I really did laugh out loud—hilarious!’ David Byrne, musician

‘A hilarious take on that age-old problem: getting the beloved child to go to sleep.’ National Public Radio

Ratings and reviews

Yeah its funny. I didn't laugh out loud and quite honestly I just want my $4.71 back.

It'd be nice if the free sample included at least one page of the actual book instead of just the front cover.

Bloody hilarious. Loved it. Some people just need a lamp thrown at them so they lighten up!

About the author

Adam Mansbach’s novels include The End of the Jews, winner of the California Book Award, and the best-selling Angry Black White Boy, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2005. His fiction and essays have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Believer, Granta, the Los Angeles Times and many other publications. He is the 2010–11 New Voices Professor of Fiction at Rutgers University, New Jersey. His daughter, Vivien, is three.Ricardo Cortés has illustrated books about marijuana, electricity, the Jamaican bobsled team and Chinese food. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly, New York Magazine, the Village Voice, the San Francisco Chronicle, and on ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ and CNN. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he is working on a book about the history of Coca-Cola and cocaine.