‘Boring’ book by Suffolk author aims to send children to sleep

A “boring” children’s book aims to put youngsters to sleep before they reach its ending.

The book is the idea of Will Hackett-Jones, from Needham Market, Suffolk, who struggled to get his daughter Katie to sleep during a long-haul flight and so came up with the idea of telling her a dull bedtime story.

After it worked, he thought it could be an opportunity to help others, so he wrote The Old Wooden House – a story with no plot or excitement.

Now living in St Petersburg, Russia, Mr Hackett-Jones said it had successfully worked on other children, but not many knew the ending as they had already fallen asleep.

The 45-year-old said it had been “a case of desperation” during a flight to New Zealand with Katie.

“I just thought I’ll whisper something really boring to her and see if it sends her to sleep, and it did. It was amazing,” he said.

“After that I tried it a few more times in New Zealand on my daughter’s various cousins, and it worked every time, and I thought there was a book in this.”

Mr Hackett-Jones, who had always wanted to write, added: “I try to lean into it and just say, have your exciting books, your dragons, all that sort of thing.

“But ultimately you want to be able to go downstairs and have a glass of wine with your other half. You don’t want to be upstairs reading to the kids for six hours. It’s bedtime, after all.

“So have the fun book and then the calm-down book.”

The author, who read Russian studies at university, has lived in the country since 2003.

He later set up a translation business, but it “ground to a halt” when the war with Ukraine began.

Mr Hackett-Jones, who is also working on a novel for adults, said that if the “delightfully dull bedtime story” was successful, he might think about writing a series of “sleepy books”.