Ms. Rachel and Bean and the Bedtime Routine. By Ms. Rachel (Rachel Anne Accurso) and Mr. Aron (Aron Accurso). Illustrated by Monique Dong. Random House. $19.99.
The unassuming educational books built around “Ms. Rachel,” a YouTube personality and educator best known for creating the charmingly titled “Songs for Littles” – a kids’ music series intended to foster language development among infants, toddlers, and preschoolers – continue to come across as enjoyable, engaging and only moderately cloying. They are designed as teaching aids for adults, not only kids, and that purpose is quite explicit in Ms. Rachel and Bean and the Bedtime Routine. The book’s subtitle, or subhead, appears on the cover and title page as “Encouraging a Calm and Comforting Good Night,” and that proves to be the entire purpose of this pleasantly straightforward presentation of gentle nighttime encouragements demonstrated by the cartoon version of Ms. Rachel along with the utterly adorable Bean, a teddy-bear-like plush-toy character used online primarily for potty-training material but here employed for a full range of pre-sleep activities.
The entire book is instructional, from its step-by-step presentation of going-to-bed ideas to its back-of-the-book “Sleep Tips for Toddlers” (written directly for adults in a collaboration between Ms. Rachel and Karyn Marciniak, Ph.D.) to its real-time bedtime-routine tear-out chart that duplicates the one shown within the story. It is this melding of the real world with the fantasy one of Ms. Rachel, which is very adeptly given visual life by Monique Dong, that helps adults and kids alike connect the underlying enjoyment of the relationship between Ms. Rachel and Bean with the not-always-smooth quotidian experiences of parents trying to find better ways to manage sometimes-frustrating elements of daily life with children – such as bedtime.
There is narrative here but no “story” per se, and that is exactly the point. The only thing that happens in Ms. Rachel and Bean and the Bedtime Routine is that Ms. Rachel invites readers to help her get Bean ready for bed, and then the pre-bed activities commence and are followed step-by-step until at last Bean is safe and happy in bed and Ms. Rachel thanks readers and reminds them to manage their own bedtime as well as they have helped her manage Bean’s.
The teaching techniques in Ms. Rachel and Bean and the Bedtime Routine are straightforwardly age-appropriate. A comment about picking up and putting away toys uses the words “pick them up” (and variations) no fewer than five times. A reference to taking a bath, including putting special bath toys in the tub, says “put them in” four times. Songs are ever-present on the pages, as Ms. Rachel and Bean follow the “bedtime routine chart” whose real-world version is eventually offered to readers. Giving Bean a sense of participation and control is crucial to this routine – although those big words appear nowhere in the book. For instance, Ms. Rachel gives Bean a choice of pajamas and, later, a chance to choose which book she will read to him after he gets into bed. Everywhere there is a pervasive sense of upbeat positivity – for instance, the book Bean is said to choose is called I’m Grateful, and the “reading” uses those two words more than a dozen times. Then, after this in-book “book time,” Ms. Rachel gives Bean a choice of songs to sing and then the option of a hug (which, unsurprisingly, he wants). Again, everything is participatory and is designed to model Bean’s bedtime as a cooperative venture, not something imposed by an adult on a child.
Of course Bean falls asleep easily, and in-book Ms. Rachel talks about the wonderful dreams he is having – but this is where the real world and the world of Ms. Rachel and Bean and the Bedtime Routine part ways. As the “Sleep Tips for Toddlers” pages make clear, this book is about toddler bedtime – not that of infants or older children. And of course everything is simplified: Bean, for example, has had a wonderful, active day, which helps him fall asleep easily; but not all kids’ days are upbeat, bright, conflict-and-frustration-free and pleasant, and the day can and will affect the night. So a slavish attempt to follow the well-intentioned routine outlined in this book will soon prove inadequate to each child’s real-life circumstances. There are a few suggestions here about what to do when that happens, but the main point of the book is to try to ensure that it does not happen and that a carefully structured bedtime routine goes smoothly every night. That is patently unrealistic – but adults who use Ms. Rachel and Bean and the Bedtime Routine as a jumping-off point for their own, suitably modified bedtime-for-toddlers arrangement will find the book a very useful, very pleasantly presented set of ideas for an idealized world that it is at least worth trying to emulate in the much more confusing and complex world in which kids and adults actually live.
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