You have to fucking eat

Adam Mansbach, 1976-

Book - 2014

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Subjects
Published
[New York, New York] : Akashic Books [2014]
Language
English
Main Author
Adam Mansbach, 1976- (author)
Other Authors
Owen Brozman (illustrator)
Physical Description
1 volume (unpaged) : color illustrations ; 17 x 22 cm
ISBN
9781617753787
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Mansbach's Go the Fuck to Sleep (2011), a bedtime story for sleep-deprived moms and dads, was a number-one New York Times best-seller. Mining the sometimes wildly inappropriate thoughts that flit through parents' tired brains, it was pretty funny the first time. Now it's a joke we've heard already, and it doesn't get better with age. Tackling another point of parent-toddler conflict, mealtime, this sequel mines exactly the same vein of humor: The sunrise is golden and lovely / The birds chirp and twitter and tweet / You woke me and asked for some breakfast / So why the fuck won't you eat? And so on, for 28 pages that plod endlessly toward the Catskills rim shot at the end (My failure's complete. / But on the bright side, maybe this is the night / You'll go the fuck to sleep.). The key element of transgressive humor is surprise. With this book, however, we know what's coming, and the only surprising thing about this leaden recitation of profane, hackneyed verse is that it took so long for the publisher to cash in again. It's not even a little bit funny, but that's not the worst part the worst part is its mean-spiritedness. If the first book provides catharsis by tapping into the awful things parents think but dare not say, the second book legitimizes those awful things and suggests that it's just plain fun to swear at kids. And to us, that's not f--king funny.--Graff, Keir Copyright 2015 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Mansbach's (Rage Is Back, 2013, etc.) second children's book satire/foulmouthed balm for exhausted parents spotlights the agony of managing toddlers at mealtime.Go the Fuck to Sleep, the 2011 surprise hit by the otherwise serious novelist, was a canny blend of Dr. Seuss' patter and Irvine Welsh's profanity, all the funnier for the oddness of its sweet-and-sour combination. The book became an international best-seller, and Mansbach is careful not to mess with success for the sequel. A new illustrator, Brozman, is on board, but the overall strategy remains the same: There's a problem (picky eaters) introduced in a lilting pastoral lullaby ("The bunnies are munching on carrots") that is then undone at the end of each quatrain with some angry-dad sputtering ("The fucking meal's served. Time to eat"). Every parent of a toddler endures a series of crises daily (cleaning up toys, going potty, picking out clothes), and this series is bound to be tediously repetitive should it continue. But Mansbach and Brozman do just enough here to entertainingly tweak the formula, particularly in terms of its art. Unlike Ricardo Corts' gentle, painterly illustrations for Sleep, Brozman's are more overtly cartoonish and absurd, like a cheetah stoically tolerating a boy's tableside slovenliness and a panda parent glumly pushing a shopping cart through a bamboo forest. Mansbach voices genuine frustration in a way that would be irresponsible in kid lit and unprofessional in parenting guidesit's a joke that, like most good jokes, has a serious point behind it. The lines are sometimes rhythmically clumsy: "You're not finished, and no, you can't go to school / In pajamas, a hat, and bare feet." A world of weary moms and dads deserves better scansion, but then nobody's here for the poetry. A likable variation on a universal fucking theme. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.