10 Minutes till Bedtime

Amazon.com
"Ten minutes till bedtime!" Father announces from behind his newspaper. Out a picture window, his son and his son's pet hamster can see a hamster family (with kids numbered 1 to 10) approaching the house. "All aboard!" shouts the boy's prized pet, as his puzzled owner opens the door and the hamster tourists are loaded onto the special trolley. What the humans at 1 Hoppin Place don't know is that their cherished family pet has advertised on the Web (www.hamstertours.com) for a "10-Minute Bedtime Tour," and the hordes have only just begun to descend.

"Nine minutes till bedtime," Father insists, oblivious to the burgeoning hamster parade. At the 8-minute marker, the hamsters and the boy are in the kitchen for a pre-bedtime snack. One little guy is standing on top of a fruit bowl, lowering a cherry cluster with a string and paper clip. Hamster number 10 is trying to feed an animal cracker to the boy's fuzzy bedroom slipper. "Seven minutes till bedtime!" reminds Father as creative tooth-brushing progresses. But what's this? It's the 5-minute countdown marker, and the faint light of hamster headlights appears out the window. More tourists are on their way! Buses, trucks, taxis, and golf carts full of rodents are driving up the sidewalk! Hilarious hamster hijinks ensue. If you're not seeing the appeal here, it's like this: each spread is turbocharged with dozens of winsome, adorable details that will keep youngsters giggling and entranced--and counting to 10--time after time. Peggy Rathmann, author of the Caldecott Medal-winning Officer Buckle and Gloria, offers readers a rollicking rodent romp that ends with a goodnight kiss and many, many closed eyelids. (Click to see a sample spread. Copyright © 1998 Peggy Rathmann, published by Putnam Books, a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers.) (Ages 2 to 8) --Karin Snelson


From Publishers Weekly
Another countdown begins in 10 Minutes Till Bedtime by Peggy Rathmann, as an entire community of hamsters joins a boy and his own pet hamster in getting ready for bed. Loads of activity on each spread finally causes the boy to scream, "BED TIME!" and all go peacefully off to sleep. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 2-Tales about stalling bedtime abound but none wag more cleverly than Rathmann's humorous picture book. The countdown begins for the spiky-haired, bunny-slippered boy who lives at 1 Hoppin Place when his father announces, "10 minutes till bedtime." Suddenly, a family of hamsters, all decked out in numbered jerseys, arrive at the door and are greeted by a hamster tour guide (the child's pet), who shouts, "All aboard!" As the boy's oblivious, newspaper-reading father issues a minute-by-minute countdown, the tour bus heads to the kitchen for a snack, stops in the bathroom for cleaning up, and ends up in the bedroom for a story. Just as the boy begins to read, the tour guide shouts, "More coming!" Hordes of vacationing hamsters arrive in a variety of vehicles, and the frenzied pages overflow with a series of amusing sideshows. Finally, the child shouts, "Bedtime!" and everyone clears out before his father's goodnight kiss. Picture a combination of Rathmann's Officer Buckle and Gloria (Putnam, 1995)-both of whom make cameo appearances-and Martin Handford's Where's Waldo? (Candlewick, 1997) and that conveys the zaniness, style, and ingenuity at play here. Children will pore over the comical details and follow closely the antics of the numbered hamsters, each one with a personality of its own. Every aspect of page design adds to the fun, including the endpapers that feature hamster family photos. Rathmann has another hit, one that will extend years of bedtime deadlines, but who's counting?-Julie Cummins, New York Public LibraryCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Ages 5^-7. Busy is the operative word for Rathmann's latest picture book, with some of the setup beginning rather awkwardly on the page preceding the title page. The freewheeling, cartoonlike artwork tells the tale, picturing the activities of a group of hamsters, whose "10-minute Bedtime Tour" coincides with the countdown routine of a little boy getting ready for bed. Mom and Dad hamster arrive with their 10 hamster children, each one distinctive in some way--number 6 wears a backpack; number 8 never shows its face; number 10 is the baby, etc.--presumably so that each can easily be spotted as the events unfold. The gimmick is the sort that kids love. Unfortunately, it doesn't hold up here: the hamsters are too small, the numbers on their shirts aren't always clear, and after hordes of other tiny hamsters unaccountably arrive for the last few minutes of the tour, finding a favorite character becomes more frustrating than fun. Children will love the more obvious gags--a hamster swinging from a jockey-shorts parachute, glimpses of old friends Officer Buckle and Gloria (who have nothing to do with the story), and the fact that the hamster family decides to stay--but such amusing particulars aside, this is more chaotic than comfortable--and despite the title, it is not the best choice for easing kids into bedtime. Stephanie Zvirin


From Kirkus Reviews
Rathmann (Officer Buckle and Gloria, 1995, etc.) offers a loony look at the shank of one child's evening in this manic picture book. The story is in the pictures; the text consists of the calling out of the countdown of the last ten minutes to bedtime by a boy's father, comfortably ensconced in his armchair and behind a newspaper. In the newspaper and on a computer screen, though, readers glimpse an ad for www.hamstertours.com. The boy's hamster has apparently offered the ten-minute bedtime tour to every hamster in the world, and while the boy snacks, brushes his teeth, and reads a story (this very book, as it happens), more and more hamsters arrive, in toy cars and oatmeal-box trucks and on foot. By the time it is ``2 minutes to bedtime,'' our hero either realizes he's forgotten his bath or decides to give the multitudinous hamsters more of a show, so he leaps into the tub and out, dries himself, uses the potty, gets back into his green-striped pajamas, and into bed shouting an answering ``Bedtime!'' to his father's cry. The hamsters melt away and the father comes in for a goodnight kiss. The colors are clear and cheerful; the boy, with his saucer eyes and fuzzy slippers, will enchant any child who has listened to a similar countdown to lights out. (Picture book. 2-7) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
The countdown to bedtime is about to begin when a family of hamsters arrives at the front door. "All aboard," shouts the child's pet hamster, and it's off to the kitchen for a snack, to the bathroom for toothbrushing, to the bedroom for a story. And just as the child starts to read, more hamsters stream through the front door and the escapades accelerate as the countdown continues. Now in a sturdy board book format, this favorite bedtime book is ready for a younger audience.


Card catalog description
A boy's hamster leads an increasingly large group of hamsters on a tour of the boy's house, while his father counts down the minutes to bedtime.


Buy from Amazon     Compare Prices

Peggy Rathmann's new book hasn't the one-two punch of its predecessors, Officer Buckle and Gloria and Good Night, Gorilla (both repeatedly invoked here), but what it does have is the Rathmann sense of small-fry mischief. (Ten minutes until bedtime: what will you do?) And the book has her delight in detail: the marginalia, multiplied, is the main attraction. A blue-capped and jacketed hamster leaps from his cage, in his exercise wheel, on the title-page spread; the hamster's boy constructs an excursion wagon, propelled by the exercise wheel, on the copyright page. A page turn, and we're inside the story: the boy's father, behind a newspaper, loudly intones, "10 minutes till bedtime," as the boy and the hamster peer out a picture window at an approaching precession of tiny figures...which materialize into an extensive hamster family, the children sporting sweaters numbered one to ten and already, barely inside the door, making mayhem as the "bedtime tour" commences. At the sound of "9 minutes till bedtime," they board the excursion wagon; at "8 minutes till bedtime," they're in the kitchen snacking on animal crackers plus; "7 minutes till bedtime" finds them in the bathroom, cavorting with toothbrushes. Minute by minute, they mimic the boy's bedtime routine-interrupted, at the five-minute count, by an influx of vacationing ham-sters literally and figuratively without number. The ensuing commotion, followed by the mad scramble to exit as the countdown comes to a final, ringing close, is the essence of explosive fun. But wait: the boy is in bed, kissed by his father, and the hamster family remains, ensconced (chiefly) in the pet hamster's cage-where, in Rathmann's most cunning touch, the hamster mother is knitting a tiny sweater, numbered eleven. How come, if the tour is over, they get to stay? Best not look for logic. In Rathmann's deft hands, the mounting and subsiding tumult, and the laugh-along hamster antics, are attractions enough.
--Horn Book Read all 6 "From The Critics" >


Buy from Barnes & Noble     Compare Prices