I received an e-mail a few weeks ago from a colleague with the PDF of a book entitled Go the F**k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach. I read through it an it was completely spot on in regards to trying to get the kid to sleep. According to the Wik, the PDF was part of an unintentional viral marketing campaign that pushed the book to #1 on Amazon’s best-seller pre-order list and pushed the release date up by about 4 months. I would post the PDF, but I don’t want to deprive this guy of his money. (There is a video of some guy reading the book on YouTube, but it is not the same.) Here are preview pictures from Amazon:

on

The book is written like a traditional children’s book except with a little profanity sprinkled in. If you can’t read the picture above here is the sample from Go the F to Sleep:

Some people have been critical of the book as if they think it is a book that parents would read to their kids. Those parents would scare me. This is not a book for kids, but rather it is for parents.

On top of the awesomeness of this book, the only thing that could make it better would be an audio version. Even if I tried to think about someone better to narrate this book I don’t think I could have picked anyone besides Samuel L. Jackson. (Not Star Wars Samuel Jackson, but Die Hard and Pulp Fiction Jackson.) When you hear it he just delivers the lines with some passion and heart it is compelling. And right now the download is free from audible!

It reminds me of a TED talk I watched a little while ago about Parenting Taboos. There are a lot of thoughts most parents have at some point that are not “correct” for us to say. Anyone who has a child between 1 and a half and 3 knows about the trials of getting their kid to sleep and the barrage of requests they make to stay up a little bit later. This book takes that shared frustration and handle it in a light-hearted and poignant way. Just make sure you don’t leave it on the kid’s bookshelf.