The Bed Book

Beds: part of our everyday life and certainly a key part of bedtime. But, what if there were different kinds of beds? Snack Beds that dispensed cold chicken, Tank Beds with levers and cranks to play with, and maybe even a pocket-sized bed that grows to full size when watered? As long as it’s not going to shrink back to the size of a pea when you’re asleep in it, of course.

This brilliant, slightly anarchic and yet comforting rhyming book about all the amazing beds that could exist is a really lovely bedtime read. The text is fun to read with lots of interesting language and repeatable lines little ones will love listening and remembering to say aloud the next time. It’s also an original subject for a picture book and might well inspire fun conversations with slightly older listeners about what fun and imaginative beds they would like to sleep in.

Written by legendary poet Sylvia Plath for her own children and illustrated in a picture book for the first time by Cindy Wume, this is a joyful book that fans of older rhyming texts such as Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes will enjoy. Wume’s delightful, diverse illustrations perfectly capture the playful imagery of the text and give a lovely poem a new life for modern times.