Five bedtime books we want to see reprinted by 2028
A short, polite letter to publishers — plus the small, very specific reasons each title still has work to do.
We do not, as a rule, write listicles. Listicles are the form most aggressively colonized by SEO-driven children’s-book content of approximately zero seriousness. They are also, occasionally, the most useful thing one can write — when the publishing industry needs a small nudge toward something specific. This is one of those occasions.
Five out-of-print bedtime picture books that we believe should be reprinted by 2028. We have written quietly to the relevant rights-holders; this is the public version of the same letter.
1. The Half-Birthday Cat (Vivian Walsh, Olive Doelger, 1953)
Out of print since 1981. A picture book about a cat that celebrates a “half birthday” at midnight, having been born at exactly noon. The illustrations — by Doelger, who never produced another picture book — are in a pale-green-and-cream palette of unusual restraint. The text is a single 200-word poem with internal rhyme that reads aloud beautifully.
We have a circulated 1953 first edition on our studio shelf and we believe it is one of the unjustly forgotten American picture books of the postwar period. The rights, as far as we have been able to determine, are held by Doelger’s estate, which has not been responsive to inquiries. We continue to try.
2. La nuit du chat blanc (Anne Letuffe, 1998)
A French picture book that had a brief print run with the small Belgian publisher Pastel in 1998 and went out of print within four years. The illustrations are inky-black with a single white cat — line-drawn — moving through nine spreads of nocturnal Paris.
Letuffe’s draftsmanship is extraordinary; the book has the visual identity of a print-magazine illustration from the 1930s, rendered with what we believe was a Pelikan ink and a brush we are unable to identify. The book is currently held at the Centre national du livre as an exhibition piece. We believe a faithful reprint — using the original separations, if they exist — would find a strong audience among French and Belgian families who have heard of the book but cannot find it.
3. Tystnaden i skogen (Inga Borg, 1972)
A Swedish picture book about a fox and a hare meeting in a forest at twilight. The illustrations are gouache-on-board, in Borg’s signature palette of muted oranges and grays. The book had a Swedish first run, a German co-edition (Stille im Wald), and a Norwegian edition. None has been reprinted since the mid-1980s.
Borg’s estate has been receptive to a reprint conversation, according to a contact at Bonnier Carlsen. We are optimistic about this one.
4. Goodnight Mister Tom (Michelle Magorian, 1981, illustrated picture-book edition)
A particular and fussy choice. Goodnight Mister Tom is a famous middle-grade novel, still very much in print. What we want to see reprinted is the 1982 illustrated picture-book adaptation by Magorian and illustrator Margaret Tempest — a 32-page version intended for younger readers that condenses the book’s central themes into the bedtime ritual between Tom and Will.
The picture-book edition had one print run. We have a copy. It is one of the warmest evening-routine illustrations in late-20th-century English children’s books. The rights are held jointly by Magorian’s estate and Penguin Random House UK. We believe a reissue, at this moment when the original novel has had a generational revival via streaming adaptation, would be commercially viable.
5. Hodu, hodu, hodu jewes (Iza Łysenko, 1936)
A Polish bedtime book published in Warsaw in 1936, partially destroyed in the war, and surviving only in a handful of incomplete copies in Polish library collections. The text is a small Yiddish-Polish bedtime lullaby with illustrations by Łysenko, a Polish-Jewish illustrator who did not survive the war.
Reprinting this book would require careful work with several institutional partners: Polin Museum in Warsaw, the Sejm Archive, and the Wydawnictwo Dwie Siostry imprint that has been doing excellent work on prewar Polish-Jewish children’s literature. The work would be slow and the commercial returns small. We believe it would be one of the most important reprints of the decade.
A note to publishers
We are not naive about how publishing works in 2026. Reprinting an out-of-print picture book is, financially, almost always a worse bet than commissioning a new one. We accept this. We are arguing that small backlist reprints, well-chosen, contribute to the visual literacy of a generation in a way that algorithmic new titles do not.
If any reader of this magazine is, in any capacity, working in children’s-book publishing or rights — at a house, an agency, an estate — and is willing to have a brief conversation about any of the five books above, please write to [email protected]. We do not need credit. We need the books back in print.
— The editors.