SLEEPY STORIES

Young Nicolás has a voracious appetite for stories and no sympathy for a profoundly sleepy storyteller.

In a work told as a scripted dialogue, a storyteller identified only as “Me” spins the yarns to Nicolás, often yawning and nodding off midstory. But Nicolás is ever demanding, wanting those sleepy stories now. The six tales, told over three days, are all extremely bizarre. A man is too sleepy to make it home, so he curls up inside his umbrella until a heavy rain causes him to nearly drown. Another man stretches one part of his body at a time until his head reaches home and he pulls the rest of himself into bed. After more tales involving a skateboard and a long swim, monkeys and seals, robbers, and long bus rides, Nicolás asks for yet another, and it all comes to an abrupt, unexplained end. Bianki’s equally strange, deeply hued, full- and double-page illustrations alternate between depictions of the tales and scenes of the characters. Nicolás and “Me” seem to be a pair of birds with tuxedo tails, wearing shoes and socks on their long legs. They are seen at a table, atop a peacock with its egg alongside, in a tree, on a dog’s back, and in other odd positions, with “Me” holding a book, perhaps this very one. The tales’ actions are vividly depicted, with the addition of many odd bits and pieces floating through. Young readers and their perplexed grown-ups will want to read and reread again and again.

Wildly imaginative, surreal, beautiful…in a word, this Argentine import is fabulous.