Where Will the Sleepy Sheep Sleep?

Where Will The Sleepy Sheep Sleep is undoubtedly a tongue twister of a bedtime story. The alliteration device used gives a rhythm to the tale and creates a mood by its rhyming couplets. Combine this with the delightful illustrations of a sleepy sheep and already you have a drowsy tone. As the story progresses and the sheep rejects more sleeping spaces, his eyelids become heavier and heavier.

The sheep searches in vain for a safe place to relax and sleep but there are so many unsafe and cold places, his search for safety must continue. Eventually he finds a place to snuggle into. This is somewhere “Warm, safe and dry, and softly snugly “; by this time the reader will be ready to snuggle down as well.

Contrasts begin with crisp, clear illustrations emphasising the cold night setting in. The foxes and dingoes are to be avoided as well as the cold cave, the hollow log and the spiky grass. The beautiful merging of the illustrations and the language add to the story and we feel the weariness of the sheep.

This is a story for bedtime and for brave storytellers. Such fun to follow the journey of a very sleepy sheep “on this cold, wet, windy, wild, lonely, dark, dangerous, bleak, and scary night?”