FOXBOROUGH, Mass — Four-year-old Jack Francomano was an hour and counting into his nightly bedtime shenanigans when his parents started to crack.
“Jack, you are done,” Stephen said as Jack darted from his room, yet again, and Sarah practiced deep-breathing exercises.
“My room is making me sweaty!” he wailed as his father scooped him up, a deceptively cute figure in Superman pajamas who had already rushed into his parents’ room and turned on the television, played games on his father’s phone while promising to go to sleep soon, tearfully refused to be read a book, disturbed his (easygoing) 8-month-old brother William in his crib and, in a last-ditch effort that sparked a brief argument between his parents, said he was thirsty.
Then, finally, at 8:31 p.m., it was over. “The eagle has landed,” said Stephen, 44, a vice president of event technologies at Cramer, a company in Norwood, Mass., as Jack’s calls about needing to go “poopy” ceased. The grown-ups were off duty at last, but neither looked relaxed. The eagle would be up early, they knew and then, tomorrow night, up to his tricks once again.
There are no statistics on the number of kids holding their parents hostage each night, but here’s one way to measure the extent of the situation: “Go the (Expletive) to Sleep,” a sweet-looking book that gives frustrated and exhausted parents a voice, hit the top spot on Amazon’s best-seller list in May — five months before its original publication date.
With its idyllic illustrations of a peaceful twilight, a sleepy town and cuddly animals, the hardcover mimics the style and rhythm of a classic children’s story. But don’t let the children anywhere near it.
One section reads, “All the kids from day care are in dreamland. The froggie has made his last leap. Hell no, you can’t go to the bathroom. You know where you can go? The (expletive) to sleep.”
The book pulled off the incredible feat of going viral before it even came out, after author Adam Mansbach gave a reading in Philadelphia in April at the Fourth Wall Arts Salon, and parents in the audience told their exhausted friends, who told their exhausted friends. A PDF of the book leaked online, and many parents reported having it forwarded to them by multiple friends. The intense interest prompted Akashic Books, a small publisher in Brooklyn, to move up the official release to be available for Father’s Day. Akashic initially planned to print 10,000 copies but ended up printing 50,000 in the first run. By Tuesday, there were 275,000 copies in circulation.
Mansbach, 34, an otherwise serious writer and poet and, of course, the father of a young child who wouldn’t go to sleep, said he thinks his latest work resonates because it lets parents know they’re not alone. Think of it as a profanity-laced self-help book.
“It’s a tremendous amount of time to spend failing at something,” said Mansbach, who grew up in Newton and is the son of a Boston Globe editor. His latest novel, “The End of the Jews,” won the California Book Award. His previous novel, the best-selling “Angry Black White Boy,” was also well received in literary circles. But neither was as popular as his current work, he said. He has sold the movie rights to Fox 2000, and a G-rated version is planned. (Although, it isn’t clear who the intended audience for that is: children? Prudish adults?)
“A lot of us don’t have a lot of free time, and every minute, every hour you are in that room is a huge chunk of your evening,” he said. The book came into being after the fantastic response Mansbach got to a joking Facebook status update he posted about a year ago, inspired by a challenging night trying to put his daughter to sleep. It read, “Be on the lookout for my forthcoming children’s book, GO THE (expletive) TO SLEEP.”
Ricardo Cortes, the book’s illustrator and also a Newton native, said he wanted the illustrations to play the straight man to the funny and profane text. “I wanted you to be lulled into the story as you might with a classic children’s book,” he said, “less jokey and more Caldecott Medal winner.”
The book came with a ready-made audience. About one out of every four children 10 and younger has sleep issues, estimates Dr. Dennis Rosen, associate medical director of the Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders at Children’s Hospital Boston. Despite the prevalence of sleep problems, Rosen said, less than one-quarter of parents with affected children seek medical help. The rest, apparently, are toughing it out — or are self-medicating now with the Mansbach book.
