No Sleep for the Sheep!

No Sleep for the Sheep!

Written by Karen Beaumont

Illustrated by Jackie Urbanovic

2011

Karen Beaumont’s No Sleep for the Sheep!, with the aid of illustrations by Jackie Urbanovic, tells the tale of an unlucky sheep who is awoken by a variety of barnyard friends before finally achieving a peaceful sleep.

Beaumont’s language makes this text conducive for a read-aloud, as it tends to flow in a sing-songy way throughout the book. The first sentence begins, “In the big red barn on the farm, on the farm, in the big red barn on the farm,” and many sentences throughout the book maintain this same captivating repetition. The text also establishes from the very start that the sheep is the main character of the story, particularly because he is the only animal that speaks any dialogue other than the sound designated to each specific barnyard animal. Beaumont includes the same rhyming patterns throughout her text that add to its melodic quality: “...to the duck at the door. And please don’t QUACK any more!” and “ ‘Shhh! Not a peep! Go to sleep!’ ”

The illustrations and colors really give the book its character. The front cover is fascinating in itself: even before opening the book, we can predict that it will involve lots of fun animal characters, a lot of chaos, and some frustration for the poor sheep. The illustrator certainly doesn’t stop there: she uses both the title page and dedication page to set the twilight scene and show us the sheep’s thorough preparation for a good night’s sleep. On the first page of text, our attention is drawn to the top left corner first, where we see the moon and a small duck in the distance. Only then we notice the text when we look further down the page; the story begins, and then we see the sheep fast asleep in the big red barn on the far right. But we cannot forget the image of the duck as the first entity we saw, and as we read on, we realize that the illustrator uses these tiny animal images in the background to foreshadow the next animal to come wake up the sheep in the story! The author and illustrator chose to present each animal noise in a big, bolded font, different from the rest of the text. You can practically hear the animal making the noise in your head! For each animal noise that appears, the font is a different color and grows bigger, as the sheep gets visibly more and more flustered. Coincidentally, the animals get physically larger throughout the story, excluding the rooster in the end, and each makes a bigger production of their entrance into the story.

The illustrator begins the title page at a purpley-orange twilight, and by the first page of text, the sky is blue for the duck’s entrance, and a quarter moon hangs in the sky. The sky stays this blue color in the background, and the moon continues to make an appearance, until all the animals are sleeping peacefully and dawn approaches. At that point, the sky, barely visible through the barn window, turns a faint orange, and then a bright yellow when the rooster appears. Though the illustrator doesn’t necessarily differentiate background color per animal, Urbanovic does use full spreads in the moments when the sheep is most exasperated and begs the other animal to go to sleep; similarly, she reduces the image when all the animals fall asleep in a heap, to create an impression of peace and stillness.

Upon first reading, the rooster surprises us all after such a rough night of interruptions for the poor sheep. But we are happy to see that the sheep is finally able to sleep happily alone on the last page. Generally, kids at this age hate having to go to sleep, but they might be able to apply the concept of interruption and frustration to their own lives; hopefully they will remember this story later due to its fun, quirky nature and when they experience their first night of no sleep.