Go the Fuck to Sleep is a satirical book written by American author Adam Mansbach and illustrated by Ricardo Cortés. Described as a "children's book for adults", it reached No. 1 on Amazon.com's bestseller list a month before its release, thanks to an unintended viral marketing campaign during which booksellers forwarded PDF copies of the book by e-mail.
Background
When Adam Mansbach's daughter, Vivien, was three years old, she would take up to four hours to fall asleep. Exhausted and exasperated, one night Mansbach posted a note on Facebook, "Look out for my forthcoming children’s book, Go the Fuck to Sleep". Following his post, friends of Mansbach responded enthusiastically, so that Mansbach began writing what was then only a hypothetical book. Mansbach had the illustrations for the picture book done by a friend, illustrator Ricardo Cortés (a contributor to The New York Times), and approached Akashic Books, a book publisher from New York.
Summary
Go the Fuck to Sleep is written as a "children's book for adults". While its writing is in the style of classic children's bedtime stories, it includes the parent's language as commentary on the tricks used by Mansbach's daughter to avoid having to go to bed. The narrator advises the child that other animals have gone to sleep already including cats and lambs, and asks the child to "Please go the fuck to sleep". As the pleading progresses, the narrator begins to grow more upset, decrying himself as a parent, then eventually falling asleep himself. He wakes to find his child asleep, then quietly exits to watch a movie with his spouse. Unfortunately, a beep from the microwave wakes up their child again.
Publication history
Go the Fuck to Sleep was subject to an unintended viral marketing campaign after PDF copies of the book, presumably from advance copies sent to booksellers, were distributed via email. While the book was originally scheduled for release in October 2011, by the end of April the book had hit No. 2 on Amazon.com's bestseller list, and by May 12 the book was No. 1. In the meantime, the publishing date was moved up to June, and the publisher increased its first printing to 150,000 copies. Akashic, which acknowledged the importance of social media in popularizing the book ("it's a miracle from the heavens for us"), is trying to prevent copyright infringement of the book. The book's title on the cover had the letters "uc" in the word "fuck" hidden by a full moon, while the book's text includes the full word. The rights for the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth were acquired by Canongate. The film rights have been optioned by Fox 2000.
The audiobook company Audible.com published an audiobook version of Go the Fuck to Sleep, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson. The CD's total running time is just over 7 minutes, which includes an unabridged reading of the book by Jackson, a brief introductory monologue by Jackson explaining why he decided to record the book, and approximately 2 minutes' worth of introductory and legal matter (spoken copyright notice, etc.). The actual reading of the manuscript by Jackson runs approximately minutes. It was a finalist for the 2012 Audie Award for Audiobook of the Year and Audie Award for Humor.
The book was translated into many other languages, and in February 2014, it was announced on Facebook and in other sources the book would receive a translation into Jamaican patois, entitled Go de Rass to Sleep.
Themes
According to Mansbach, the frustrations he wrote about "are not permissible to talk about. We're not completely honest because we don't want to be bad parents." Macy Halford said this frustration elicited a response peculiar to modern parents:
According to Mark Rotella, an editor at Publishers Weekly (and father of two), this is one of the books "that are less earnest about raising your child. They help parents step back and laugh at themselves a bit ... It's more like a parenting book for when the parent is inconsolable in the middle of night and frustrated." The publisher for the UK and the Commonwealth, Canongate, likewise pointed to the book as a parents' book: "This book perfectly captures the familiar and unspoken tribulations of putting your child down for the night. In the process, it opens up a conversation about parenting, charming and enraging as it can be, and chimes a note of solidarity with tired parents everywhere."