A POPULAR new bedtime book called Mr Daggerteeth is about a monster that eats children who make any sort of noise or movement during the night.
Author Wayne Hayes explained that rather than lulling them to sleep, the book aims to paralyse troublesome infants with terror.
He said: “Mr Daggerteeth is a deeply evil monster with leathery skin and a big round head full of teeth like kitchen knives. I suppose you’d describe him as a fiend.
“He lives under the bed and if he hears any sound louder than a heartbeat, or sees a foot touching the floor, he pounces and drags the child off to live in Nightmareland forever and ever.
“In the book, the only way for children to survive the night is to keep very, very quiet between the hours of 9pm and 8.30am, which is when Mr Daggerteeth goes off to work in the soul-bottling factory.”
Hayes invented the character of Mr Daggerteeth to coax his own children into a terrified, motionless state at bedtime.
He added: “At first my wife was horrified, but she soon came around when she realised how quiet it made them. Now nothing interrupts our sleep, occasionally we hear some light sobbing but that’s all.”
