The Going To Bed Book by Sandra Boynton
Published 1982 · 16 pages · 4,400 words · Children's Literature
How hard is The Going To Bed Book to read?
The Going To Bed Book scores 50 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 50 out of 100
- The Going To Bed Book uses a toddler's words for baths, pajamas and sleep, set in short rhymes. It sits below the simplest anchors such as Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
- Sentence structure: 50 out of 100
- Sentences are brief rhymed lines with plain subject-verb order, only a few per page. Even Anne Frank's diary is more demanding.
- Abstraction: 60 out of 100
- Everything is concrete: tubs, pajamas, toothbrushes and a rocking boat. Nothing asks the child to think abstractly, so it sits below Asterix the Gaul.
- Information density: 50 out of 100
- A few lines per spread carry one bedtime step each. The pace is slow and light, far below Beach Read.
- Narrative indirection: 60 out of 100
- The book states each step of the routine outright, and the pictures show the same thing. There is nothing to infer, unlike even Asterix the Gaul's visual jokes.
- Symbolic density: 80 out of 100
- The rocking boat carries a soft sense of lulling, but the book stays literal. Symbolism is far lighter than in Beach Read.
- Ironic distance: 60 out of 100
- The tone is warm and sincere, with silliness in the pictures rather than irony. It matches the plain earnestness of Judy Blume's Margaret.
- Resolution withholding: 40 out of 100
- The routine ends with the animals settled and asleep, a complete, soothing close. It is as resolved as Beach Read's happy ending.
- Structural complexity: 40 out of 100
- The book follows a single linear sequence from bath to sleep. It is simpler than the Diary of a Young Girl.
How The Going To Bed Book is regarded
The Going To Bed Book holds a literary regard score of 34 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.