I mentioned it to my husband and while he didn’t remember it right away, one glance at the cover and it all came flooding back.įor a very brief synopsis I picked up this one from the publisher.
Just look at those testimonials! It’s also one of those books that linger in the mind. I’m going to go out on a limb here and proclaim that of all the picture books you find in the Top 100’s nineties, none have the love that Ira Sleeps Over has garnered here. I was probably the last kid in my class to stop playing with dolls, so I could relate to Ira, whose sister has him convinced he’s a baby if he brings his teddy bear to a sleepover. I couldn’t put this series down and remember waiting impatiently for all the sequels. Reggie’s ghost story is among the funniest things in children’s literature, but it is not the humor but the emotional pathos of this book that gets me the heartbreaking decision Ira has to make between trying to act “grown-up” when all he wants is his teddy bear, capped by the exchange between Ira and Reggie when Ira discovers that Reggie has a teddy bear too is enough to bring me to tears. Although some of the activities mentioned in the book are slightly old-fashioned, the uneasiness many children feel when they are away from home is decidedly not! The unexpected twist at the end is most satisfying. I regularly include it when I read aloud to older groups of children (K-2 grade). While I can remember many favorite chapter books from my childhood, there are only a handful of picture books that I distinctly remember reading and enjoying (my mother saved many of my picture books, so I know I had quite a library of picture books). #96 Ira Sleeps Over by Bernard Waber (1972)
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