Twenty Yawns - Hardcover

Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, as well as five works of nonfiction and a series of books for young adults. In 2001 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2006 she received the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. This is her first picture book. She lives in Northern California.

Lauren Castillo is the illustrator of many books, including The Reader by Amy Hest. She has also written and illustrated several books, including Caldecott Honor book Nana in the City and The Troublemaker. She lives in Pennsylvania. Readers can find her online at www.laurencastillo.com and follow her on Twitter @studiocastillo.

In her first outing as picture book author, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Smiley (A Thousand Acres) explores the spookiness of being awake when everyone else has fallen asleep. After a long day at the beach, Lucy and her parents are out of steam. Mom dozes off during Lucy’s bedtime read-aloud, and Lucy finds her father slumbering in his armchair when she tiptoes into the living room to retrieve her bear, Molasses. Lucy’s sense of solitude is sharpened as she sees her drawings hanging on her bedroom wall: “Everyone in the pictures seemed to be watching her—Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Elizabeth, Mom, and Dad.” But this haunted moment passes, and by the time Lucy has put her beloved stuffed animals to bed, she’s calm and ready for sleep. Castillo’s (Yard Sale) spreads call up just the right sense of moonlit otherworldliness. Her signature soft black outlines unite the beach prelude with the main nighttime story, and she quietly embraces diversity by making Lucy’s family biracial. As a bonus, readers can search for the title’s twenty yawns. Ages 3–7.