If you've read The Night Vegas Turned Kingdom Red to your little one, you already know it's the story of the Chiefs' Super Bowl LVIII win — told as a rhyming bedtime story, with illustrations by Kansas City artists Kristen and Kevin Howdeshell on every spread.
But here's what most readers miss on the first read-aloud: the book is hiding a dozen Taylor Swift lyric nods in its rhymes.
It started as a joke between me and my wife. Half the parents reading bedtime stories in Chiefs Kingdom are Swifties now — so why shouldn't the bedtime story have something for them? I wove lyric references into the verses: "feeling 2022," "lavender haze," "blank space," "out of the woods," a party "like it's 1989." There's even a ticket stub in one illustration marked Section 1989.
And in exactly one illustration, someone left a lipstick kiss on #87's cheek. Page 25. Now you know where to look.
The easter eggs turned our bedtime routine into a game. My son hunts the football story; the grown-ups hunt the lyrics. If you're a Swiftie parent — or you're shopping for one — this is the Chiefs children's book that reads twice: once as a bedtime story, once as a treasure hunt.
The Night Vegas Turned Kingdom Red is available in hardcover ($22) and paperback ($13) on Amazon. Written in Kansas City, illustrated in Kansas City, for Chiefs Kingdom everywhere.
