Tales from the Crib



One day, while D.W. is playing at Vicita's house, then she accidentally breaks one of the latter's Secret Agent Christy doll's heads off. However, Vicita immediately forgives her and is about to get another doll when...

... she finds her crib is disassembled, and she got a new bed. She is worried and wants her crib, but D.W. tells her about how she got through sleeping in a bed.

About a year ago, because D.W. was getting to be a big girl and because Mrs. Read is expecting a new baby, the latter decides to buy the former a new bed and give the crib to the new baby (though D.W. wants to sleep in the crib all her life).

At the store, a salesman shows D.W. a sunflower bed with a "secret" pull-out drawer, but D.W. doesn't care. She also refuses a bed with monkeys on the headboard. Before she can finish insisting she wants the same crib she always had, she observes a royal unicorn bed and picks that one.

Then she tells the Tibble Twins about this, but they say they'd never sleep in a bed because of "Aracnar" (however it's spelled): Lord of the Spider People. But that was just an "Irving Legend" ("the kind of story [one's] old [non-existent] Uncle Irving tells, which is real scary, but doesn't actually happen").

That night, D.W. gets too excited about her new bed to go to sleep, so she gets out of bed and goes through every book on the shelf. She then exits her room and sneaks into her parents' room, so her mother brings her back to her bed, declaring that she knows it's new to sleep in a bed, but even she and daddy need their sleep, and she tells her to stay in bed.

Again, D.W. gets out of bed and goes into Arthur's room to play tea party with his teddy bear, Stanley. When she's about to "warm up [Stanley's] cup", she only knocks it (with pens and pencils inside it) over, waking up Arthur and scaring him (as he thinks there are robbers). Mr. Read comes in and brings D.W. back to bed and tells her not to get out of bed anymore... and Arthur tells her not to play with Stanley anymore. D.W. is amused that Arthur was so scared, but he denies it. Then they all go back to bed and stay in for the rest of the night.

The next night, everything starts off normally, and Mrs. Read (tucking D.W. in) tells her not to get up from her bed tonight. Although D.W. desires to get some sleep, she thinks about how much there is to explore. She gets up again (though she was told not to), and she tried turning on the TV. Then she accidentally steps on a clown doll who tells her to press the button on her tummy. She then sneaks into the kitchen for some ice cream. Although she manages to get the ice cream, she drops it due to "Aracnar", and spills it, leaving Pal to eat it up. She then runs back to bed and gets caught by the blanket (who seems to be alive) as she tries to get to the crib. This wakes Arthur who thinks the robbers are in D.W.'s room. He goes in to try to save her, but ends up fighting with D.W. instead (by accident). Mrs. Read reveals that there's nothing wrong with fear, but Aracnar doesn't exist; however, D.W. invites Mrs. Read to sleep with her that night anyway, thus ending her trouble sleeping in her bed.

Back to the present, Vicita still doesn't want to sleep in a big-girl bed, but later, Vicita invites her to sleep over on her first night. That night, although Vicita is now sleeping, D.W. gets up from the bed to see what kind of ice cream they had. (She probably must only have been through sleeping in her own bed at her own house.)