Sleepy: Surprising Ways Animals Snooze

PreS-Gr 4–This book sets out to show readers how animals sleep. There are two rhyming couplets that describe how an animal sleeps, then a short paragraph with more specific scientific information, including the specialized nomenclature for the different kinds of sleep. As an example, a frigate bird, which cannot swim, may spend two months out at sea; they use a uni-hemispheric sleep, where half their brains are at rest. A range of vertebrates are profiled, giving this further appeal for a lot of readers. The artwork is soft and inviting, but also accurate. The last two pages of the book have definitions of some of the most specific sleep vocabulary as well as pie graphs that show sleep time versus awake time for the animals featured. It’s a lovely and accessible visualization. This would be an excellent book for talking about animal adaptations but also a great read-aloud at bed time.