There is no better or more humorous affirmation of this fact than the short book of lullabies, written by Adam Mansbach, entitled Go the F**k to Sleep.
Obviously, it’s an adult book. At the time of writing, Mansbach was a new father. And like many a new parent, he was run ragged by the constant awakenings of his child: the polyphasic profile of infant sleep. The incessant need to attend to his young daughter, helping her fall back to sleep time and time and time again, night after night after night, left him utterly exasperated. It got to the point where Mansbach just had to vent all the loving rage he had pent up. What came spilling out onto the page was a comedic splash of rhymes he would fictitiously read to his daughter, the themes of which will immediately resonate with many new parents.
“I’ll read you one very last book if you swear,
You’ll go the fuck to sleep.”(I implore you to listen to the audiobook version of the work, narrated to perfection by the sensational actor Samuel L. Jackson.)
— Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams (Matthew Walker), Loc. 1380–7
October 27, 2026 comment:
I found this book when our first kid was very little and had tremendous sleep problems, which would become smaller over time, in, say, 6 years or so. The book is very short, it’s like 30 minutes of narrating, maybe. If not shorter. I won’t recall.