Tatu and Patu’s Oddball Bedtime Book

By Aino Havukainen & Sami Toivonen

An indispensable book for anyone who sleeps! This book has everything, from instructions for choosing a bedtime toy to a troubleshooting chart for insomniacs. As a bonus, the book includes the world’s most boring bedtime story.

When goddaughter Satu is coming to spend the night at Tatu and Patu’s house, the boys go all out in preparation. Since they will have to put her to bed, they have composed a new treatise entitled On Dreams, Drowsiness, Bedtime, and Lovely Lullabies, or O.D.D.B.A.L.L.

The book explains how to choose the perfect bedtime toy to achieve the optimum stuffed-toy density. There is a troubleshooting diagram for when sleep just won’t come. The boys also figure out how the length of fingernails affects back-scratching and how the soulfulness quotient of a lullaby affects the sleeper’s ability to achieve drowsiness.

The book also tells what really happens when you sleep, and leads Tatu and Patu on a wild adventure in dreamland. The true meaning of sleep is made clear, and the terrifying consequences of prolonged night-owling are only too clearly revealed.

Publishing information

About the author

Aino Havukainen & Sami Toivonen work together as children’s authors, illustrators, and graphic designers. For the young Finnish readers they are best known as the creators of the hilarious Oddville boys, Tatu and Patu, whose limitless imagination we can admire already in 23 titles to date. The riotous humour of these hugely popular illustrated books appeals to children and adults alike. Tatu and Patu: This is Finland won the Finlandia Junior prize in 2007, and in 2017 the authors were granted the Finland State Prize for Children’s Culture. In Finland Tatu and Patu books have sold over 1.3 million copies and the translation rights have been sold in 31 languages. Aino Havukainen was born in 1968. She graduated as a graphic designer from Lahti Institute of Design in 1992 and has worked as multimedia designer and as an AD in an advertising agency until the beginning of her free lance career in 1996.Sami Toivonen was born in 1971. He graduated also as a graphic designer from Lahti Institute of Design in 1994 and has worked free lance since 1996. He was awarded in 1989 with the Finnish Critics’ Association’s award “Boost for Criticism” for his comic strips, given annually to a young artist for a fresh artistic breakthrough.