Meet Auntie Dozer

Auntie Dozer

So sleepy she keeps dozing off mid-sentence — children finish her goodnight for her

The voice: Drowsy, trailing voice
Home: The Sleepy ForestWhere the trees close their eyes one branch at a time
Part of: SleepThe ones whose whole job is getting you there.
How home goes to sleep: It goes to sleep when every secret eye closes, one after another.

The story of Auntie Dozer

Auntie Dozer is the original champion of sleep. Long ago she lay down by the Zzzzz Tree on the edge of the Sleepy Forest and slept for over thirty years — a record nobody has broken, and nobody ever will, and that title is hers forever. And now? Now she drives the sleepy bus, and she never sleeps. That is the quiet joke of the whole ride: everybody else nods off, one seat at a time, and Auntie Dozer — whose name says otherwise, whose record says otherwise — is the one at the wheel, steering them safely home. Perhaps thirty years was simply enough. You almost always see her from behind, over her shoulder, through the windscreen, her tall purple nightcap with its little yellow stars flopping down behind her. Children watch the back of her cap, and the road going slowly by, and the watching gets slower, and slower, and somewhere before the last stop they are asleep — every one of them except Auntie Dozer, which is exactly how it is meant to go.

Friends

The Zzzzz TreeHer tree — thirty years of her life were spent asleep against it.
Little KipThe young champion; Auntie Dozer’s duration title stands forever, and both facts are true.