about the book
A little girl wearing a crown complains at bedtime, “I’m not tired, I’m just not sleepy.”
Her parents tell her she does not have to sleep, but she must wash up and put her pajamas on.
Her parents assure her that every mammal sleeps. They begin talking about how different animals sleep in the wild. Her mom tells her about the tigers who hunt during the day, then find a spot in the shade to curl up with their tail wrapped around them at night. Tigers sleep so they can stay strong, the mother tells the daughter, as she pulls a stuffed tiger off the shelf.
At that moment, that the little girl decides she, too, will be like a tiger.
about the author
Even though author Mary Logue has written nonfiction, adult fiction, young adult, and middle-grade books, she considers poetry as the foundation of her work. She has written four books of poetry; her latest is Hand Work. “I don’t think I distinguish much between all the forms of writing. Usually when I get an idea, it comes in the form it should be—if that makes sense. A line, a thought, I will try to capture in a poem. A scene, a conflict, usually should be a novel,” she says.
Mary is fluent in French and has translated twenty-eight children’s books from French into English. She also is an avid rug hooker and even has had her rugs displayed at art exhibits. She currently teaches creative writing at Hamline University.
Mary grew up in Minnesota and still lives there with her writer husband Pete Hautman and two poodles named René and Jacques. They also own a home in Wisconsin, where they live part of the time.
Sources:
Author website
Author biography: Hamline University
Author interview: Star Tribune
Author interview: University of Minnesota
Book trailer: Sleep Like a Tiger
about the illustrator
When you look at illustrations and paintings by Pamela Zagarenski, you’ll find imagery such as crowns, teacups, wheels, bowls, and bees. Pamela wants those who look at her paintings to make up stories of their own and thus discover something about themselves.
Shortly after she graduated art school from the University of Connecticut, she began illustrating. But a turn of events forced her to get a “real job.” She began working for Whyevernot Gallery in Mystic, Connecticut, and began painting on a large scale. She continues to work and exhibit her paintings there. When she became more financially stable, she returned to illustrating books.
Pamela usually starts a painting or illustration with a cup of tea in one hand and a brush in the other. She communicates with her paintings—sometimes even talking to them. While working on a large painting, a series of paintings, or book, she will find a song that she will listen to over and over again for an entire day, and sometimes for a week or an entire month. “The song becomes a kind of working meditation. The song will even be in my head while I sleep. Sounds crazy, but I do it quite often,” she says.
Pamela works in an unheated studio, converted from a barn surrounded by moss-covered stones, boulders, stonewalls, fields, and trees. She lives in Stonington, Connecticut, with her dog, Basho and cat, Willa.
Sources:
Illustrator website
Illustrator biography: At the Gallery
Illustrator interview: Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Also by Pamela Zagarenski:
Red Sings from Treetops : A Year in Colors by Joyce Sidman. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2009.
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The Full Moon at the Napping House by Audrey Wood
In this sequel to the beloved 1984 children’s book, The Napping House, a full moon shines on a house of restless occupants. But a lone cricket chirps “a full moon song” and lulls a mouse to sleep, which calms the cat, which sets off a chain reaction that eventually calms the fidgety child and the wide-awake grandma.
Red Sings from Treetops : A Year in Colors by Joyce Sidman
In the spring, “Red sings / from treetops … / each note dropping / like a cherry / into my ear.” And in summer, “white clinks in drinks.” What do the colors of the seasons look, sound, smell, and taste like?