DR. SEUSS'S SLEEP BOOK

DR. SEUSS'S SLEEP BOOK
Theodor Seuss Geisel
Unpaged, hardback, $14
(First published by Random House in 1962)
ISBN 0-394-80091-5

Reviewed by Lynne Lamberg

Reading bedtime stories to small children demands dramatic verve. A gift for odd voices and outlandish noises surely helps. Humor in the writing and illustrations entices adults to give encore performances. Humor also serves as a small recompense to the child for agreeing, however reluctantly, to suspend exploration of the vast, exciting, waking world, to go to bed.

A thought-provoking message sustains interest of parent and child. Good bedtime stories need just the right amount of repetition and a satisfactory resolution to lull the listener to sleep. Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book satisfies on all counts.

In the decade before its publication, landmark discoveries launched modern sleep medicine. University of Chicago researchers showed that the brain often is as active, even more active, when we sleep as when we are awake. Public interest in sleep and dreams soared. Answers to enduring questions seemed closer at hand: What happens when we sleep? Why do we sleep? How much sleep do we need? News media widely broadcast new scientific findings.

This climate pervades Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book. "The news just came in...," the book begins. From a single yawn, "Sleep thoughts are spreading throughout the whole land. The time for night-brushing of teeth is at hand." Research advances drive the narrative. "Do you walk in your sleep...? I just had a report of some interesting news of this popular sport."

In sleep, scientists showed, we ignore stimuli we would recognize if we were awake. Seuss's Chippendale Mupp bites his tail at bedtime. "His tail is so long, he won't feel any pain, 'til the nip makes the trip and gets up to his brain." That trip, incidentally, takes "exactly eight hours," the amount of sleep that physicians then regarded as healthy for adults. That's still true, though fewer and fewer people now manage regularly to sleep that long.

The link between snoring and the sleep-related breathing disorder, sleep apnea, wasn't recognized forty years ago. Snoring was regarded mainly as a nuisance, albeit one that could disrupt social relationships. "They snore in a cave twenty miles out of town. If they snored closer in, they would snore the town down."

Many early studies explored the workings of the mind in sleep. Waking sleepers in the rapid eye movement or REM state of sleep revealed that most dream content is prosaic: we think at night about the same things we think about in the day. Here is Dr. Seuss: "A moose is asleep. He is dreaming of moose drinks. A goose is asleep. He is dreaming of goose drinks."

The purpose of sleep, Dr. Seuss suggests, is for rest and restoration: an idea most of us intuitively accept, but that scientists have yet to prove. Weary parents can empathize with salesmen who lead Willy Loman-like lives, "unsuccessfully trying to sell Zizzer-Zoof Seeds which nobody wants because nobody needs." At the end of the day, Dr. Seuss relates, they finally put down their loads. "Tonight they've forgotten their feet are so sore. And that's what the wonderful nighttime is for."

Theodor Seuss Geisel wrote and illustrated 44 children's books. Many were made into films. Geisel received a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for his contribution to child and adult education, and won two Academy Awards. He died in 1991 at age 87.