Many parents consider Adam Mansbach to be a maestro of profanity and prose after his faux children’s book, “Go The F*** To Sleep,” made them giggle with its honest look at the frustrations of putting kids to bed.
Mansbach has now turned his attention to another big parenting issue — children with finicky appetites —with his newest book, “You Have To F**king Eat.”
“It is something I’ve dealt with in my own home,” Mansbach told TODAY’s Matt Lauer on Wednesday.
“My daughter is 6-and-a-half now and she’s very adventurous, but she’s also inconsistent. She might ask me to make her pancakes and by the time they’re ready, she no longer eats pancakes. She’s over that.”
Eating is a universal parenting issue, Mansbach said, noting he had plenty of ammunition for his newest project.
As TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie and Natalie Morales had their hands poised over buzzers that would bleep some of Mansbach’s choice curse words, he read sample passages from his book, including:
The sunrise is golden and lovelyThe birds chirp and twitter and tweetYou woke me and asked for some breakfastSo why the f*** won’t you eat?
And:
How was school, hon?Whoa, your lunch box is fullHow are you not passed out in the street?How is it you’re smart?How the f*** are you growing?When you basically don’t f****** eat?
Mansbach said he’s thrilled that actor Bryan Cranston agreed to narrate the audio version of the book. Another big star, Samuel Jackson, read his first tome after it became a huge success in 2011. It’s all a little overwhelming for Mansbach, who was stunned by the success of “Go The F*** To Sleep.”
“I was flabbergasted by it. It’s a book I wrote in 38 minutes with no pants on,” he quipped. “This took me about 49 minutes, also with no pants on.”
As for his daughter Vivien, who inspired both profanity-laced books, Mansbach said she’s aware that she’s “sort of famous.”
“She is definitely, and will be, the inspiration for every fake children's book I write,” he noted.