Put on Your PJs, Piggies! Illustrated by Sydney Hanson

Put on Your PJs, Piggies! is a not-quite-square board book that walks though nighttime routines, including little piggies stalling for more time. A bedtime snack is followed by a bath, then into PJs. The little piggies sing their nighttime song, say their prayers, count sheep, and then fall asleep. The daddy pig helps them through their routine and is mentioned in the text. The mommy pig is shown in the illustrations during the nighttime song, prayers, and sleep time.

One of the little piggies is much smaller than the rest and the littlest pig is my favorite part of this book. The littlest pig is too small to know to close her eyes during the prayer and continues her wide-eyed laying pose that she has throughout the entire story. The funniest part is on the last spread where every other animal in the barn is sleeping, but the littlest piggie is still wide awake.

Each spread features a four line stanza of rhyming couplets. Each also has a phrase about PJs: "Almost PJ time, piggies!" "Get ready for PJs, piggies!" "Time for PJs, piggies!" "Put on your PJs, piggies!" However, even after the piggies have put on their PJs, the "Put on your PJs, piggies!" line is repeated five more times. It doesn't really make much sense, especially after the piggies have already fall asleep.

The illustrations are very well done. There are lots of little details that make them very enjoyable, like bubbles from the bath s\till apparent on the grass in the next spread while the piggies are putting on their PJs.

Other animals that appear in the illustrations include a calf and its mother, a foal with a parent, a cat, a baby mouse with parent, and a sheep family of one parent with three small sheep. The front cover features some spot slitter on the piggies PJs and on the moon.

Overall, it's a cute book, but the text, especially the repetition of "Put on your PJs, piggies!" is a little disappointing. Repetition can be a positive feature in a board book, but I was not a fan of how it was carried out in Put on Your PJs, Piggies! It was much more effective in Sydney Hanson's other Bedtime Barn Book, Go to Sleep, Sheep! because the repetition happened in the middle with a different first and last page message. The sheep family featured in Put on Your PJs, Piggies! will be very familiar to anyone who's read Go to Sleep, Sheep!

I received a copy of this book from the publisher, but was not required to post a positive review.

Go to Sleep, Sheep illustrated by Sydney Hanson

“The silly sheep in Bedtime Barnn don’t want to go to bed! Will they ever tire out?”

Go to Sleep, Sheep is described as being a book to relax children who insist they are not sleepy. The pages describe in cute rhyming stanzas how the four young sheep delayed bedtime by asking for more playtime, snacks, eater, stories, and finally praying before snuggling into the hazy for the night. Most pages end with, “Go to sleep, Sheep!” Though two pages break from that trend to say “Ready for sleep, Sheep?” At the beginning and "Sweet dreams, sheep” at the end.

The illustrations by Sydney Hanson are cute and fit the calming mood of the book. Other animals from the barn are also included in the illustrations, though not mentioned in the text. These include a curled up cat, a bright-eyed baby pig, a foal and it’s mother, a calf and it’s mother, and even a baby goat with it’s mother. The pokey hay are the only sharp lines in the book, everything else is rounded without texture. Each of the sheep have a different accessory to make them unique: one with glasses, one with a scarf, one with a hair bow, and one that has one, matching the mother sheep.

The cutest moment is when a little sheep tells her mother that she loves her most of all.

This is a sturdy board book cut out in the shape of a barn.  The moon on the cover is glittery. This story is just the right length for bedtime.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher but was not required to post a positive review.