Customer Reviews

Max's Bedtime

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My toddler and I love the Max books. Max's Bedtime is one of her favorites - at 18 months old she was able to find the missing "red rubber elephant" that Max cannot sleep without! Great for little kids, fun for grown-ups too.

My children found Max and Ruby through the television programme rather than the book. Given that they love Max and Ruby and love books I thought this was a no-brainer. I was therefore very disappointed in the amount of substance to this book. It is very much a board book with very little narrative. I am sure that it would be great for very young children but at 2.5 years there is not enough to keep their interest.

I was very disappointed in the description of this book provided by Amazon. It is touted as a Hardcover Book on the website, but when it arrived, it was a board book. My daugher loves Ruby & Max, but I try to get the hardcover editions as they are a little meatier. This one is below her level.

This is a joyful series. Try to get the first edition (1979/84) as the illustrations are much better.

Our first Max book was Max and the Chocolate Chicken, which although silly and amusing, is a lengthier read and more pages to turn. We found this large format version with fantastic pen and watercolor illustrations, whereas this series of books, Max's Bedtime, is from a smaller sized collection and has a slightly different style of illustration and fewer pages and less dialogue. Still entertaining nonetheless, the story leaves our daughter wanting more.

Max and Ruby appear on Noggin, and my grandsons love to watch them so I purchased a book for us to read together.

My 2-year-old son loves Max & Ruby and asks to watch the show most evenings before bed. I decided to get him a Max & Ruby book, thinking he'd love that too. I was right! He asked for this book every night before bed for the first 2 weeks we had it and now, after a couple months, it's still one he reaches for often. I only give it 4 stars, because I feel it could have been a little longer. Any child who watches the show has a long enough attention span for a few more pages, and I think that would have made this book perfect.

Every child deserves to be read to from the moment his or her eyes can focus on a page. The problem is that most of the books that appeal to children under two, with simple, uncluttered pictures and only a few words per page ( and usually no story to speak of) are not exactly fun to read if you're any older than two. You read them because you feel obligated to, not because you want to.

Rosemary Wells' Max books are different. They have great appeal to small children (I had to buy two sets of the books for my two children, because my son wore his out by hugging them so much. They were in shreds by the time his sister came along.) But adults can read them over and over again and never get tired of them. The stories and the illustrations are hilarious, and priceless.

In this one, Max can't sleep without his red rubber elephant, so his older sister Ruby tries to give him substitutes, including a snake. The wide-eyed look on Max's face when he has a stuffed snake wrapped around him is, all by itself, worth the price of the book. In the end, Max finds his elephant, and tucks in Ruby, who has fallen asleep. The role reversal - the younger brother taking care of his older sister - is really sweet.

But mostly the book is just clever and funny and wonderful. If you have a new baby, you are going to have to read a lot of truly boring books in the next couple of years. Do yourself a favor and buy at least a few of the Max books. You might even make it through the terrible twos with your sanity intact.

And I love Max and Ruby! This book was a great buy for me to give my son. When we read it to him he has to sleep with it. He can relate to Max since they are pretty much on the same wavelength.
His older sisters laugh and love to watch the show with him, and they are teenagers!!!

Doggone if Ruby doesn't try hard to help Max get to sleep, but nothing seems to work! Keep an eye out for the red rubber elephant in each picture.

Not my child's favorite Max book (he prefers "Max's New Suit"), but good to break up the routine once in a while.