When Sheep Cannot Sleep by Satoshi Kitamura

“When Carol cannot sleep, what does she do?” I asked myself. Actually, insomnia rarely happened to me, but it happened when I drank caffeine beverage. It is reading that helps me sleep well; on the contrary, when I counted sheep (it said that it’s useful for sleeping), it wasn’t worked. Thus, I didn’t believe that counting sheep was really helpful. But why do we believe this folktale until now? Where does this come from? Well, I think I find the answer in this book.

Since we count sheep for a nice night, if sheep cannot sleep, who should we rely on? In this book, a sheep suffered from insomnia so that he found ways to help him. At the beginning he went for walk, there he met different insects and animals: ladybirds, squirrels, owls and so on. In the end, a lightning sharply broke the sky; the sheep was frightened; thus he decided to go back home, lay on the bed. At that time, his eyelids became heavier and heavier. After playing outside for all night, the sheep was easily fall into sleep, and I think he would sleep tight this time. In the last page, there is an index that has numbers 1 to 22. Actually, I have no idea what’s the meaning of this page. But after I looked again, there was something interesting attracted me. “Hahaha…….” Laughing came out directly after I knew why this page put there. Although the cover had told readers it is a counting book, I cannot figure out until I saw the last page. So I read it again to make sure whether the numbers are continuous. This is a creative and interesting method to teach children the concept of numbers. With animals and animals’ color, it is not only have ideas about numbers but can know a variety of colors.

From this book, I knew the sheep would have trouble with sleeping. The way the sheep solved, I think, he had “exercised” so much through the night that he eventually felt tired. Even the sheep would suffer from insomnia; the human beings probably could copy this pattern, then they would have a nice and stable night. If someday the reading habit doesn’t work anymore, the story will be reminded me of this cute sheep.