(Formerly) Local Author Makes Good

Adam Mansbach, 38, who lived in Mt. Airy 2009 to 2011 while he was a visiting professor at Rutgers University (“I liked Mt. Airy a lot and Rutgers as well,” he told us), wrote several literary novels over the years with names like “Rage Is Back,” “Angry Black White Boy,” “The Dead Run” and “The End of the Jews,” winner of the California Book Award. He has also written for the New Yorker, New York Times, Esquire, the Believer and National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.

So Mansbach, a Boston native who went to Columbia U. for his undergrad degree and a master’s degree in fiction writing, was a successful and highly regarded writer but certainly not a household name until he decided to write an offbeat (to put it mildly) bedtime book for kids. He had looked around for such a book, but everything he found was sappy, boring and a turnoff, even to children. 

...Go the F**k to Sleep” was on the New York Times best-seller list for more than a year, and most of that time it was number one. Over 1.5 million copies were sold worldwide. Since the dollar signs associated with the book were practically in neon lights, it will come as no surprise that movie studios began contacting Mansbach. The winner was Fox 2000, which purchased the rights to the film version. Mansbach chose not to write the screenplay, primarily because he had no idea how he could pull it off.

And as with so many successful movies, there was bound to be a sequel, so Mansbach’s follow-up book, “You Have To F**king Eat,” was published last November, and it debuted on the New York Times best-sellers list.