So Sleepy Story

A New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Book of the Year

“Evokes the lulling rhythms of Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon.” ―Booklist, starred review

“An ode to the predictable rhythms yet also the surprising moments that comprise an ordinary day.” –Publishers Weekly, starred review

“There is much for [youngsters] to see and enjoy here. A bedtime bonanza.” ―School Library Journal, starred review

“A dreamy story.” ―Kirkus Reviews

“An appealing book whose blue-tinted watercolors could induce nodding off all on their own.” ―The New York Times Book Review

Uri Shulevitz (1935-2025) was a Caldecott Medal-winning illustrator and author, born in Warsaw, Poland, on February 27, 1935. He began drawing at the age of three and never stopped. The Warsaw blitz occurred when he was four years old, and his family fled, as chronicled in his memoir Chance: Escape from the Holocaust. For eight years, they were wanderers, eventually arriving in Paris in 1947. There, Shulevitz developed an enthusiasm for French comic books and began creating his own. At thirteen, he won first prize in a drawing competition in Paris’s 20th district.

In 1949, the family moved to Israel, where Shulevitz worked various jobs, including an apprentice at a rubber-stamp shop, a carpenter, and a dog-license clerk. He studied at the Teachers’ Institute and the Art Institute of Tel Aviv. At fifteen, he was the youngest to exhibit in a group drawing show at the Tel Aviv Museum.

At twenty-four, he moved to New York City, studying painting at the Brooklyn Museum Art School and illustrating for a publisher of Hebrew books. A discovery of a fresh, spontaneous style in his doodles marked the beginning of a new approach to his illustrations for The Moon in My Room, his first book, published in 1963.

He has since written and illustrated many celebrated children’s books. He won the Caldecott Medal for The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship and earned three Caldecott Honors for The Treasure, Snow, and How I Learned Geography. His other notable works include One Monday Morning, Dawn, and So Sleepy Story. He also authored the instructional guide Writing with Pictures: How to Write and Illustrate Children’s Books.

Shulevitz’s final book, completed shortly before his death in New York City at age eighty-nine, is The Sky Was My Blanket: A Young Man’s Journey Across Wartime Europe. This narrative nonfiction account details the adventures of his father’s brother, Yehiel.

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