{"id":5498,"date":"2025-09-06T07:21:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T07:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/5498\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T07:21:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T07:21:09","slug":"boring-book-by-suffolk-author-aims-to-send-children-to-sleep-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/5498\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Boring’ book by Suffolk author aims to send children to sleep"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alice CunninghamBBC News, Suffolk and<\/p>\n

Wayne BavinBBC News, Suffolk<\/p>\n

\"ContributedContributed<\/p>\n

Katie inspired The Old Wooden House after she struggled to fall asleep during a long-haul flight<\/p>\n

A “boring” children’s book aims to put youngsters to sleep before they reach its ending.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

After it worked, he thought it could be an opportunity to help others, so he wrote The Old Wooden House \u2013 a story with no plot or excitement.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"ContributedContributed<\/p>\n

Katie managed to fall asleep after her father told her a dull story during their flight<\/p>\n

The 45-year-old said it had been “a case of desperation” during a flight to New Zealand with Katie.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

\"ContributedContributed<\/p>\n

Will Hackett-Jones has tested his new book on a few children as well as his wife, and it proved successful <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“So have the fun book and then the calm-down book.”<\/p>\n

\"ContributedContributed<\/p>\n

The Old Wooden House has been released in both English and Russian<\/p>\n

The author, who read Russian studies at university, has lived in the country since 2003.<\/p>\n

He later set up a translation business, but it “ground to a halt” when the war with Ukraine began.<\/p>\n

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”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alice CunninghamBBC News, Suffolk and Wayne BavinBBC News, Suffolk Contributed Katie inspired The Old Wooden House after she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[489,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-5498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}