Bob Shea

The Lion Does Not Sleep Tonight!

Penguin is very sleepy, but Lion wants him to tell a story. Every time Penguin starts to drift off, Lion does something to wake him—right when Penguin has started having a wonderful dream. They are filled with lots of colors, a unicorn, candy, and a train. Lion begs him to tell all about it.

Penguin insists Lion sleep, too, and they can both dream together, but that won’t do.

Lion keeps making lots of noise to disturb Penguin’s sleep, hoping for a story about the dreams.

As a sleepy Penguin, and a wide-awake Lion each try to get their way, a surprising thing happens.

Little ones will laugh at Lion’s antics while trying to keep Penguin awake, and love the dream descriptions, along with dreamy illustrations, that bring them to life. This story can be read anytime, but would make a nice bed time story to help small ones settle down for sleep.

Children three to six years-old will enjoy this five-star board book.

Thank you, Candlewick Books, for providing Tickmenot with a book to review. Opinions are my own.… (more)

Goat is wildly jealous of Unicorn in this picture book from Bob Shea, deeply resentful of being upstaged in almost every arena, from transport—while Goat bicycles to school, Unicorn flies!—to treats—when Goat brings marshmallow squares, Unicorn makes it rain cupcakes! But once he actually speaks to this newcomer, Goat is surprised to discover that Unicorn thinks he is the impressive one, and that there are things that Unicorn is jealous of as well (goat cheese! cloven hooves!). Eventually the two become a team, with complementary qualities that make them, well... pretty great.

Published in 2013, Unicorn Thinks He's Pretty Great is the first of two picture book featuring these characters—the second is the 2019 Unicorn Is Maybe Not So Great After All—and offers a humorous look at the common childhood experience of jealousy. I appreciated the pouty, resentful tone of Goat's various declarations about Unicorn, whom he assumes is very self involved, as I think it reflects how a young child might react, if feeling insecure about being outshone by a peer. I also liked the conclusion, which flips the script, highlighting how even those who seem to possess everything might feel insecure about how they measure up to others. That being said, while I liked the story here, and could even appreciate the snappy, melodramatic way it was told, somehow the end product didn't wow me as much as I expected it to, given the fact that so many of my friends seem to love this one. My funny bone (notoriously hard to reach) wasn't tickled, and I found the artwork mostly unappealing. I've enjoyed other Bob Shea titles, and I've also enjoyed other humorous unicorn stories, so I'm not sure why this one left me mostly indifferent. Tastes vary of course, so I'd still recommend this one to young unicorn lovers with a sense of humor, as well as anyone seeking children's stories about jealousy, learning to communicate, and eventually, friendship.… (more)