KIRKUS REVIEW
Brothers Max and Milo have totally different approaches to bedtime.
Neat Max is calm and ready to sleep. Messy Milo is too energetic and impatient to fall asleep easily. He wakes Max repeatedly for helpful suggestions, greeting each one with a variation of “good idea, Max.” Then he proceeds to make things worse. “Why don’t you read a book?” is followed by a noisy search for the right title. When the lamp won’t work, Max is awakened again and suggests a flashlight. Milo rigs it in a Rube Goldberg–esque contraption and proceeds to read his book amid loud bursts of laughter. And so it goes. Even with the whirring of a fan and the slurping of water, still Milo can’t sleep. And of course, neither can Max. When he finally loses his temper, it falls on deaf ears—for Milo is sound asleep and Max is left wide awake in a delightfully predictable conclusion. The tale is told visually within cartoon panels of varying sizes and configurations with balloons of brief, simply stated dialogue. The cartoon elements are brightly colored and heavily outlined in black on a purple background. By the way, Max and Milo are totally goofy, big-eyed, orange beavers. Young readers will surely recognize the trials of sibling relationships in the exaggerated comical situations.
Laugh-out-loud fun. (Picture book. 4-8)
