The Napping House

by Audrey and Don Wood (1984)

1984 American Library Association Notable Book for Children

1984 New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book

1984 Golden Kite Award

1984 National Council of Teachers of English Teacher's Choice

Booklist Best Book of the 80's

The Napping House is a house where everyone is sleeping, until a wakeful flea joins the napping party... This is a very simple book. The author uses an additive style, piling on more characters as the story progresses and repeating lines as the story goes on. This illustrations are paintings that at first use a very cool color palette. Then gradually, as the characters in the story begin to wake, the paintings begin to fill with warmer colors until the whole cast is up and lively.

This book would be great for teaching young children adjectives. Each character has an associated descriptive word with them. You could read this story in a 1st or 2nd grade classroom and have students point out the adjectives at the end of the story, and possibly add some new characters using their own descriptive words.