''The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep: A New Way Of Getting Children To Sleep'' ( sv, Kaninen som så gärna ville somna: en annorlunda godnattsaga) is a 2011 children's book written by Swedish author, psychologist and academic

Carl-Johan Forssén Ehrlin Carl-Johan Forssén Ehrlin is a Swedish author of the bestselling children's book '' The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep'', written to help parents get their children to fall asleep. Forssén Ehrlin has a background in psychology Psycholo ...

and illustrated by Irina Maununen. As its subtitle notes, the book is intended as a form of

sleep induction Sleep induction is the deliberate effort to bring on sleep by various techniques or medicinal means, is practiced to lengthen periods of sleep, increase the effectiveness of sleep, and to reduce or prevent insomnia. Darkness and quiet Dim or dark ...

. It uses standard hypnosis techniques to get children to relax; it differs from most children's books in that among the text to be read there are also instructions on how to read the text out loud, including the placement of deliberate yawns. The book was originally written in

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

, and was self-published, available via

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...

's print-on-demand service

CreateSpace On-Demand Publishing, LLC, doing business as CreateSpace, is a self-publishing service owned by Amazon. The company was founded in 2000 in South Carolina as BookSurge and was acquired by Amazon in 2005. History CreateSpace publishes books conta ...

. It was later translated into six other languages, including

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

in 2014. After being released in English, it climbed up Amazon's bestseller charts, and in August 2015 it became the first self-published book to top the Amazon US chart. In September 2015, the book was acquired by

Penguin Random House Penguin Random House LLC is an Anglo-American multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, from the merger of Penguin Group and Random House. On April 2, 2020, Bertels ...

as part of a three-book deal. It is no longer available via print-on-demand. The book's plot consists of the title character, Roger the Rabbit ("Kalle Kanin" in the original Swedish), travelling with his mother to visit his Uncle Yawn; along the way they meet creatures including Sleepy Snail and the Heavy-Eyed Owl. ''The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep'' was parodied in 2016 by the book ''The Rabbit Who Wants to Go to Harvard'' by Diana Holquist and Christopher Eliopoulos, also published by Penguin Random House. The parody book also mocked American so-called helicopter parents. A sequel to the book, ''The Little Elephant Who Wants to Fall Asleep'', written by Ehrlin and illustrated by Sydney Hanson, was published in 2016. It is similar in structure to the original book but features a female protagonist, Ellen the Elephant.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep, The 2011 children's books Swedish children's literature American picture books Sleep in fiction Books about rabbits and hares Self-published books CreateSpace books

See also

References