The Sleep Strike! No More Naps! by Chris Grabenstein

Annalise Devin McFleece did not want to take a nap.

She fussed and fumed and shrieked from her crib. The baker on the bottom floor of the building complained that her screams cracked his cakes!

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

"Too LOUD!" grumbled the construction workers, jackhammering the concrete on the sidewalk. Annalise may not have been tired, but everyone else was.

Dad decides to take her for a stroller ride through the park. But she's still not sleepy!

The man reading a newspaper was sleepy. He yawned and stretched out on his park bench and started to snooze. A shopper cutting across the park saw him and decided to take a quick nap on the grass. Their yawns were contagious.

"We need a nap," said the policeman with a yawn. The dog walker lay down on the grass, the skateboarder used his board for a pillow, and the garbage man fell asleep over a can. Even the squirrels and pigeons were snoozing.

Annalise's dad was yawning widely, too. He was almost sleep-walking as he pushed the stroller. Annalise Devin McFleece was the only one who was wide awake. "NO," she reminded herself.

But no one heard her. Even the birds were asleep. There was nothing to see. She was surrounded by snoozing. And it was s-o-o-o-o quiet!

Her eyes grew heavy.

She actually wanted a nap, but now all the naps had been taken. They were all being used. Except for...

... the cat with white feet curled up on a windowsill across the street.

"I've had SO many naps," said the cat. "You can have one of mine!"

And despite herself, Annalise Devin McFleece falls asleep at last, in Chris Grabenstein's just published sleepytime story, No More Naps!: A Story for When You're Wide-Awake and Definitely NOT Tired (Random House, 2020). Author Gravenstein steals a bit from Mark Twain, who, when Tom Sawyer got his pals to whitewash the fence for him, pointed out that the trick to make people do something is to make the thing hard to get." Notable for his award-winning Mr. Lemoncello's Library series, Chris Grabenstein is also the co-author of many of James Patterson's best-selling series of middle school comic novels, and in this first picture book, his comic partner is the Pura Belpre' award-winning illustrator, Leo Espinosa, whose stubborn, red-headed toddler is a standout and a stand-in for all those nap-deniers out there.