The hottest book in publishing right now is the not-for-children children's book Go The Fuck To Sleep. Not only has it topped the charts on Amazon, it's also attracted top-notch celebrity readers like Samuel L. Jackson and Werner Herzog. Curious how the book's author, Adam Mansbach, and illustrator, Ricardo Cortés, were handling their instant hit, we called them up. If you like Go The Fuck To Sleep, maybe your kids will enjoy the the G-Rated version that they tell us is coming soon?
The duo tells us they are working on a rated-G version of the book, the title of which is still be determined—"'Please Go To Sleep' would be too easy" says Cortés. They settled on making a larger, kid-friendly edition after their editor's five and three-year-old kids enjoyed having their father read the book to them—with some careful editing. "The book is really funny for kids, not because it has bad words, but because it's a story about a frustrated parent and a mischievous kid who he can't get to go to sleep," according to Mansbach. "Kids totally recognize themselves in that kid and think it is hilarious—they even think the parents' frustrations are really funny. Kids have, at a certain age anyway, enough self-awareness to realize what mischievous kids are capable of and liked to see it reflected back to them."
But the pair isn't sure they want to do a sequel without the right idea. "A lot of people are very eager to give me ideas" for a sequel, says Mansbach. "I may or I may not. What I'm clear on not wanting to do is sort of a crappy sequel that's an attempt to cash in on this and isn't that funny. People are like, 'You should do 'Eat Your Fucking Vegetables!'' That's a one-liner but there's a genre of bedtime books here that I'm able to play with. There's no such thing as an 'Eat Your Vegetables' book so I don't want to do something half-assed. The other things I'm getting are totally hostile suggestions from people who are like, 'Shut The Fuck Up Or I'm Going To Throw You Off A Bridge!!!!' Yeah, dude, you got some issues, actually. That's not how I feel about my kid—I love my kid! There's a lot of affection in this book, it's not just a murderous rant!"
And while they work on the kid-friendly edition and their other projects (Cortés is about to drop a free book on Jury Nullifcation and Mansbach has a graphic novel called Nature of the Beast coming out next February), they are enjoying all the celebrities who have lined up to read their instant classic. Though Mansbach's first choice to read it was Big Daddy Kane ("I start running towards pure 80s rappers very quickly because that's how I get down"), both were very happy to have Jackson (who was brought in through Audible) and Herzog (who was brought in through the NYPL) involved. Still, the pair can think of a few other names they'd like to read the book. According to Mansbach, though "Herzog and Jackson are so amazing that it kind of made me forget about all the other people I'd like to have read the book, I would love to have Christopher Walken read it."
