Free Little Klein by Anne Ylvisaker

the house, either. The room without the Bigs was a cavern.
    Mother tried all her sleep remedies. She told him stories, sang him the spider song, fed him warm milk and buttered bread. She let him sleep in one of his father’s nightshirts because he liked the softness of it. But every night it was the same routine, Little Klein pestering her to stay awake so he could fall asleep.
    “Why can’t LeRoy sleep with me?” he pleaded, but the answer never changed.
    “What if something happens to Matthew?” he worried. “Or Mark? Or Luke? Or all of them? Who will protect me then? What if they don’t come home?”
    Mother Klein dismissed his worries. “I don’t worry about your brothers,” she said, and sang through the hymnal by heart until he fell asleep. But the next night was the same. And the following.
    “Would you read to me about cake?” called Little Klein from the bedroom one night. Mother Klein shrugged. “What do you mean?” she called back.
    “I mean, will you read to me about cake? You know, crack an egg, one cup of flour, like that.”
    Mother pondered.
    Though he was small for his age, Little Klein had the appetite of one of the Bigs. He was transfixed by the magic with which water and heat turned crisp dry oats into warm mush for breakfast and the way an unappetizing lump of raw eggs and flour and cocoa could turn into a cake with the texture of a spring meadow. Even the power of butter to fuse two pieces of bread together delighted Little Klein.
    “Well, excitement is in the mind of the beholder,” said Mother Klein. She pulled her worn cookbook off the shelf and opened it. “It’s worth a try.”
    “What kind of cake?” she asked.
    “Chocolate,” said Little Klein, snuggling down into his blanket.
    “Here goes. ‘Best Chocolate Cake. Heat oven to three hundred and fifty degrees.’”
    “No,” said Little Klein, “start with the ingredients.”
    “What was I thinking? The ingredients: ‘Two cups all-purpose flour or cake flour, two cups sugar, one teaspoon soda —’”
    “What’s soda?” Little Klein interrupted.
    Mother Klein explained the ingredients as they went through the list. By the time she got to the happily ever after of “pour evenly into pan(s),” Little Klein was asleep, a peaceful smile on his face, a drop of drool edging out the side of his mouth.
    Recipes worked for a few nights, first chocolate cake, then gingerbread, then anything with lots of ingredients and several steps. Soon, though, Little Klein’s anticipation of nightmares was worse than the nightmares themselves, and his bedtime demands got more complicated. Dessert was no longer enough. He needed a main dish first, then a salad course, and a song after dessert. When he asked Mother Klein one night to read him a breakfast, lunch, and dinner, she snapped shut her
Joy of Cooking
and stood up.
    “Enough,” she said. “My bedtime services from now on will include one song and a prayer. Now, go get your dog. If there are any nightmares lurking, his smell will surely keep them at bay.”
    By the time the Bigs returned from the farm, chipmunks had taken up residence in the doghouse and LeRoy, like Goldilocks, had tried out each of their beds, sleeping every night, though, with Little Klein.

Night after night LeRoy patrolled the long and narrow upstairs bedroom. Sometimes he needed the benefit of a tree so badly and his boys slept so soundly that he had to wake Mother Klein to be let out. But that was his only complaint.
    One night after his tree run, LeRoy peeked over the edge of Little Klein’s bed to make sure he was asleep. Then he pattered between the other three beds, sniffing at still feet and damp hair, and under beds for remnants of sandwiches or crackers. He nearly woke Mark when he got into a chase with what turned out to be a bunny of dust, which, once caught, made him sneeze. These were now LeRoy’s nightly rounds, and he trotted proudly, then, paws up on the windowsill, looked out at