10 Minutes till Bedtime [Paperback]

It's almost bedtime!  At 1 Hoppin Place the fun begins when a family of hamsters arrives at the door.  There are only ten minutes left, and there's still so much to do!  But with the help of the Hamsters' 10-Minute Bedtime Tour (guided by his own pet hamster), the little boy is able to get his toys put away, his pajamas on, his teeth brushed, and his bedtime story read-all in the nick of time.  This lively introduction to bedtime rituals and the concept of counting backwards will have young readers eagerly awaiting their own countdown to bedtime.

A sure-fire toddler pleaser from the creator ofGood Night, Gorilla. Tales about stalling bedtime abound but none wag more cleverly than Rathmann's humorous picture book. -School Library Journal

Will enchant any child who has listened to a similar countdown to lights out. -Kirkus Reviews

In the summer we lolled in plastic wading pools guzzling Kool-Aid. In the winter we sculpted giant snow animals. It was a good life.

Ms. Rathmann graduated from Mounds View High School in New Brighton, Minnesota, then attended colleges everywhere, changing her major repeatedly. She eventually earned a B.A. in psychology from the University of Minnesota.

I wanted to teach sign language to gorillas, but after taking a class in signing, I realized what I'd rather do was draw pictures of gorillas.

Ms. Rathmann studied commercial art at the American Academy in Chicago, fine art at the Atelier Lack in Minneapolis, and children's-book writing and illustration at the Otis Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles.

I spent the first three weeks of my writing class at Otis Parsons filching characters from my classmates' stories. Finally, the teacher convinced me that even a beginning writer can create an original character if the character islƒs