Sloths. Why Did It Have to Be Sloths?

Anyone writing a book about sloths must face a certain inevitable question.

“Dude, did you see that dragon show last night?”

Wait. No. Not that question. Let’s try again.

“You wrote a book about sloths?” the other person asks. There’s a pause as they digest this information. They immediately think about sloths: fuzzy, lazy, probably hanging around in trees sleeping 22 hours a day. They’re nice and all, but do they really inspire, um, great literature?

Well. Yes.

We can explain why, though.

It’s because sloths are so cute.

SO. FREAKING. CUTE.

Behold, Exhibit A: 

Look at this sleepy sloth! Look how cute he is! How can you not want to hug him and let him doze on the couch?! (Speedy Sloth is napping next to a photograph of his real-life counterpart, a two-toed sloth.)

What really happened, though, was that Sam, our intrepid author and illustrator, was daydreaming about new story ideas. She wanted a nice wind-down bedtime story — something she could read aloud to her own child before sending them off to la-la land (the place, not the movie). She knew she wanted an animal involved, preferably one that was very cute but also maybe not insanely well-known. 

Enter…the sloth.

As we learned in Exhibit A, sloths are indeed extremely cute. And as Sam started researching, she realized how little she actually knew about sloths. Oh, sure, they were slow and they lived in trees, and maybe they slept a lot…? But there was so much more to these fascinating creatures (scientific name: folivora) than she’d learned in school. 

They did move slowly though. And yeah, they’re living #treelife in the rainforest. Between the critter and the location (and the sloth’s connection to sleep), she realized a story about sloths might lend itself to a fun goodnight routine.

The more she learned about sloths, the more an interesting story took shape. Three-toed sloths were known to be calm and, yes, slow. But two-toed sloths — again, see Exhibit A — were somewhat more active than their triple-digit counterparts. What if, Sam wondered, there was a two-toed sloth who just really wanted to get a move on?

Speedy Sloth was born, as was his buddy, Slow Sloth. 

Did we mention he’s cute, too?!

This glorious specimen is Slow Sloth, seen here alongside his real-life counterpart, the three-toed sloth! We’re not sure what they’re eating but we hope it’s delicious. Also, in case you forgot THEY ARE SUPER CUTE.

And so a story was born. Speedy Slow and Slow Sloth evolved as she learned more about their species; Slow Sloth, for instance, has “sloth moss” growing out of his coat because sloth hairs, apparently, are an ideal environment for algae. And here’s a fun sloth fact: sometimes they eat that algae (er, we didn’t include that part in the book). 

With that said, we didn’t write Not All Sloths Are Slow so it could take the place of a textbook — Speedy Sloth gets up to some, shall we say, un-slothlike behavior — but we do hope it will inspire young readers (or any readers!) to learn more about these furry dudes and the jungle they inhabit. 

And if it encourages us all to get a little more sleep, well, we wouldn’t argue with that either.

Sloth team out!