From the Publisher
The countdown to bedtime is about to begin when a family of hamsters arrives at the front door. "All aboard," shouts the child's pet hamster, and it's off to the kitchen for a snack, to the bathroom for toothbrushing, to the bedroom for a story. And just as the child starts to read, more hamsters stream through the front door and the escapades accelerate as the countdown continues. Now in a sturdy board book format, this favorite bedtime book is ready for a younger audience.
Publishers Weekly
Caldecott Medalist Rathmann (Officer Buckle and Gloria) builds a captivating series of mini-plots from a basic countdown premise with few words and abundant action. A child--who could be a girl or boy--plays with an energetic hamster family with just 10 minutes to go before she's tucked into bed. As the child's father idly reads the newspaper and clocks the passing time ("9 minutes till bedtime"), a rotund hamster in a blue conductor's uniform echoes each announcement with a tiny megaphone. Meanwhile, the hamster parents and their 10 active offspring, distinguishable by numbered yellow-and-red striped jerseys, frolic throughout the house. Rathmann endows each with a distinctive personality: Numbers 3 and 4 are twins, 8 shows only its rear end and stroller-bound toddler 10 declares "eat" and "more!" After additional golden-brown rodents arrive (in Goodnight Gorilla fashion) at the front door (raising the count to well above 50), the child reads this very book to a vast audience, takes a bath surrounded by furry beachgoers (and lotion, ants and sunglasses galore), then hurries through other pre-bed rituals before a final cry of "Bedtime!" Every engrossing illustration provides an exercise in numerals and Where's Waldo?-style concentration; die-hard fans will not only count Gorilla among the throngs, but Officer Buckle opens and closes the show, and young readers will note Rathmann's return to Napville for this nocturnal adventure. If Rathmann has her way, young slumberers will be counting hamsters, not sheep, as they drift off to sleep. Ages 2-6. (Sept.)
(PW best book of 1998)
Children's Literature
It's "10 minutes till bedtime," Father intones from behind his newspaper, but the fun is just beginning. A boy and his hamster lead a slew of arriving hamsters on the "10-minute Bedtime Tour," with stops in the kitchen (for animal crackers and fruit), the bathroom (for teeth-brushing), a bedtime story, and a final trip to the bathtub. As the hamsters trundle off, the young hero settles in for the night. Rathmann brings her delightful sense of humor and a sunny palette to the spry illustrations, which feature lots of visual jokes for attentive readers (Officer Buckle, Gloria, and Goodnight Gorilla even make special appearances). Fans of I Spy and Waldo books will love tracing the adventures of the hamsters, particularly Hamster #7, who takes pictures along the way. Hamster #6, also interesting, collects souvenirs such as toothbrushes and bananas from the tour. The book is mainly wordless, with the father's gradual countdown and occasional asides from the hamsters providing the only text. Attentive readers will be rewarded with lots of smiles. 2001, Penguin Putnam, $7.99. Ages 2 to 5. Reviewer: Kathleen Kelly
Children's Literature
It's "10 minutes till bedtime," Father intones from behind his newspaper, but the fun is just beginning. A boy and his hamster lead a slew of arriving hamsters on the "10-minute Bedtime Tour," with stops in the kitchen (for animal crackers and fruit), the bathroom (for teeth-brushing), a bedtime story, and a final trip to the bathtub. As the hamsters trundle off, the young hero settles in for the night. Rathmann brings her delightful sense of humor and a sunny palette to the spry illustrations, which feature lots of visual jokes for attentive readers (Officer Buckle, Gloria, and Goodnight Gorilla even make special appearances). Fans of I Spy and Waldo books will love tracing the adventures of the hamsters, particularly Hamster #7, who takes pictures along the way (and even, in one fascinating spread, appears to be taking a picture of the reader!). Hamster #6, also interesting, collects souvenirs such as toothbrushes and bananas from the tour. The book is mainly wordless, with the father's gradual countdown and occasional asides from the hamsters providing the only text. Attentive readers will be rewarded with lots of smiles.
School Library Journal
(PreS-Gr 2) Tales about stalling bedtime abound but none wag more cleverly than Rathmann's humorous picture book. The countdown begins for the spiky-haired, bunny-slippered boy who lives at 1 Hoppin Place when his father announces, "10 minutes till bedtime." Suddenly, a family of hamsters, all decked out in numbered jerseys, arrive at the door and are greeted by a hamster tour guide (the child's pet), who shouts, "All aboard!" As the boy's oblivious, newspaper-reading father issues a minute-by-minute countdown, the tour bus heads to the kitchen for a snack, stops in the bathroom for cleaning up, and ends up in the bedroom for a story. Just as the boy begins to read, the tour guide shouts, "More coming!" Hordes of vacationing hamsters arrive in a variety of vehicles, and the frenzied pages overflow with a series of amusing sideshows. Finally, the child shouts, "Bedtime!" and everyone clears out before his father's goodnight kiss. Picture a combination of Rathmann's Officer Buckle and Gloria (Putnam, 1995)-both of whom make cameo appearances-and Martin Handford's Where's Waldo? (Candlewick, 1997) and that conveys the zaniness, style, and ingenuity at play here. Children will pore over the comical details and follow closely the antics of the numbered hamsters, each one with a personality of its own. Every aspect of page design adds to the fun, including the endpapers that feature hamster family photos. Rathmann has another hit, one that will extend years of bedtime deadlines, but who's counting?-Julie Cummins, New York Public Library.
Barbara Bader
Peggy Rathmann's new book hasn't the one-two punch of its predecessors, Officer Buckle and Gloria and Good Night, Gorilla (both repeatedly invoked here), but what it does have is the Rathmann sense of small-fry mischief. (Ten minutes until bedtime: what will you do?) And the book has her delight in detail: the marginalia, multiplied, is the main attraction. A blue-capped and jacketed hamster leaps from his cage, in his exercise wheel, on the title-page spread; the hamster's boy constructs an excursion wagon, propelled by the exercise wheel, on the copyright page. A page turn, and we're inside the story: the boy's father, behind a newspaper, loudly intones, "10 minutes till bedtime," as the boy and the hamster peer out a picture window at an approaching precession of tiny figures...which materialize into an extensive hamster family, the children sporting sweaters numbered one to ten and already, barely inside the door, making mayhem as the "bedtime tour" commences. At the sound of "9 minutes till bedtime," they board the excursion wagon; at "8 minutes till bedtime," they're in the kitchen snacking on animal crackers plus; "7 minutes till bedtime" finds them in the bathroom, cavorting with toothbrushes. Minute by minute, they mimic the boy's bedtime routine-interrupted, at the five-minute count, by an influx of vacationing ham-sters literally and figuratively without number. The ensuing commotion, followed by the mad scramble to exit as the countdown comes to a final, ringing close, is the essence of explosive fun. But wait: the boy is in bed, kissed by his father, and the hamster family remains, ensconced (chiefly) in the pet hamster's cage-where, in Rathmann's most cunning touch, the hamster mother is knitting a tiny sweater, numbered eleven. How come, if the tour is over, they get to stay? Best not look for logic. In Rathmann's deft hands, the mounting and subsiding tumult, and the laugh-along hamster antics, are attractions enough.
--Horn Book
Kirkus Reviews
Rathmann (Officer Buckle and Gloria, 1995, etc.) offers a loony look at the shank of one child's evening in this manic picture book. The story is in the pictures; the text consists of the calling out of the countdown of the last ten minutes to bedtime by a boy's father, comfortably ensconced in his armchair and behind a newspaper. In the newspaper and on a computer screen, though, readers glimpse an ad for www.hamstertours.com. The boy's hamster has apparently offered the ten-minute bedtime tour to every hamster in the world, and while the boy snacks, brushes his teeth, and reads a story (this very book, as it happens), more and more hamsters arrive, in toy cars and oatmeal-box trucks and on foot. By the time it is "2 minutes to bedtime," our hero either realizes he's forgotten his bath or decides to give the multitudinous hamsters more of a show, so he leaps into the tub and out, dries himself, uses the potty, gets back into his green-striped pajamas, and into bed shouting an answering "Bedtime!" to his father's cry. The hamsters melt away and the father comes in for a goodnight kiss. The colors are clear and cheerful; the boy, with his saucer eyes and fuzzy slippers, will enchant any child who has listened to a similar countdown to lights out. (Picture book. 2-7)
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