The Sesame Street Bedtime Storybook, featuring Jim Henson’s Muppets. It was published in 1978 by Random House.

I don’t really know how or why my kids picked this book out of the stack that was left in the room into which they moved for the summer. (We are in the process of building a house.) What I do know is that I expected some thrown-together junk, a cheap and quick re-telling of traditional fairy tales to use well-liked characters.

Not the case.

It could be my incredible rendering of the voices, from Elmo to Prarie Dawn, but my kids both really enjoyed reading a couple of these stories each night at bedtime, as did I. The stories were refreshing and silly, and sometimes even LOL. While you see the punchlines coming a mile away, it’s still fun to read these stories out loud.

The book is not long at only twelve stories, but each story is longer than expected. And if you love vintage or just have a fondness for Sesame Street…

Note that this is bedtime stories. Sesame Street also has ABC Stories and 123 Stories, both of which we had as children and which I can tell you pretty much nothing about. I liked that these stories did read like bedtime stories, often about dreams or ending with sleep. Many of the old Sesame Street books get great reviews of Amazon, but I imagine you may have to turn to eBay to get yourself copies. (One of my favorite children’s picture books is The Monster at the End of This Book, and, to a lesser degree, Another Monster at the End of This Book.)

Only problems: the illustrations were probably good by the standards of their day, but not so much today. Also, there is a ton of dialogue, as opposed to narration. I like narration better. Especially when voicing between Grover and Cookie Monster is making me hoarse.