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.

Bedtime Resistors--UNITE! Penguin and Tiny Shrimp DON'T DO BEDTIME! by Cate Berry

"THIS BOOK WILL NEVER MAKE YOU YAWN."

Penguin and his sidekick Tiny Shrimp may be dressed to doze, but don't be fooled by their clothes. Sure, Penguin is rockin' his stripey PJs and Tiny Shrimp's got his nightcap at a jaunty angle, but that doesn't mean that nighty-night snoozin' is part of their plan.

Forget it with the bubbly tub and the yellow rubber ducky. Kick the cushy bed and poofy pillow. Penguin and Tiny Shrimp are pullin' an all-nighter!

"YOU WON'T CATCH US WITH SLEEPY SHEEP OR WISHING STARS.

SAYONARA, SHEEP!"

No way these two are gonna hit the hay. The two bedtime resistors decide to try the scene on the Serengeti savanna for a run with the lions, and go for a rumble in the jungle. swinging with the monkeys on their vines. They board a boat and float into the deep sea to sail with the sharks.

Penguin can't resist doing a little stand-up to see if his anti-sleep co-conspirator is still on his toes:

"TINY SHRIMP! WHAT DO YOU CALL A FISH WITH TWO KNEES?"

"A TUNEE FISH!"

By this time they've acquired quite a retinue--a water buffalo, a lion, a uni-hippo, and an octopus--but by now, even the fireworks aren't keeping their eyelids from drooping, and the uni-hippo is yawning. And since he's the last one standing, he gets the last line.

THIS BOOK WILL SEE YOU IN THE MORNING!!

Cate Berry's brand-new Penguin & Tiny Shrimp Don't Do Bedtime! (Balzer and Bray, 2018) introduces an intriguing odd couple of anti-bedtime buddies, determined to party all night. Ever since Robert Louis Stevenson's little bedtime rebel lamented "Bed in Summer," kids have sought ways to avoid turning off the light and saying "nighty-night." Penguin and Tiny Shrimp are just the latest resistors who daydream about avoiding dreamland for real.

And a rowdy and comic romp it is. With the story told in speech balloons, noted artist Charles Santoso takes up the challenge to keep this story moving all the way to the final page--in which nature has its way with Berry's lovable little bedtime dissenters and all comes to rest. "A buoyantly subversive antibedtime tale," says Publishers Weekly.

Creature Snitcher! Hey, That's My Monster by Amanda Noll

TONIGHT, WHEN I LOOKED UNDER MY BED FOR MY MONSTER, I FOUND THIS NOTE INSTEAD:

So long, Kid. Gotta go.

Someone needs me more than you do.
                                          --Gabe

Hey! Wait! Ethan needs his monster Gabe on the job under his bed, threatening to grab his ankles and nibble his toes if he tries to sneak up at night. A growing boy needs his sleep, right? How's he going to get his quota of shut-eye without Gabe on duty?

But, then, when Ethan thinks about it, there is one someone who needs Gabe even worse than he does--his night-roaming little sister Emma, the original Creature of the Night. And Ethan's worse fears are confirmed--Gabe has indeed staked himself out under Emma's under-utilized big girl bed, giving off a ember-like red glow beneath the mattress. What's a kid to do?

GABE IS HIS MONSTER!

Ethan tries to make a deal with Gabe. He promises Gabe that He, Ethan, will get Emma to stay in her bed if Gabe will only move back under his bed.

"YOU? HA! THAT'S A GOOD ONE, KID!" GABE SNORTED.

But Gabe says he likes Ethan's gumption and gives him three shots at sending Emma to dreamland before he permanently decamps to her bedroom.

Ethan challenges Emma to knock on the floor. And sure enough, some monster-type pink goo oozes out from under the bed, and then most of the mucus monster emerges with a sinister sniff.

"BY DABE IS AGAFA!" THE MONSTER SAID. "TIBE FOR BED, EBBA!"

Emma giggles, wipes up the pink goo and keeps right on playing.

"I THINK WE NEED A MONSTER WITH CLAWS," ETHAN MUSES.

A well-clawed monster name Cynthia appears, with a long prehensile tail waving frightully in Emma's direction. But Emma just pulls out some pink plastic dress-up bracelets and decorates Cynthia's tail, pleased with her new accessories model.

"PRETTY!" EMMA LISPS.

Ethan goes for his last try with an oozy vampirish Vladimir with long snaky tentacles who makes straight for Emma with a scary Yessssssssss!

Emma grabs one tentacle and turns it into a jump rope and sings as she jumps....

"BLABIMIR, CYMFIA, AGAFA! YA YA FA FA !!!"

"THAT'S IT, KID!: GABE GROWLED. "NOW IT'S MY TURN!"

Will poor Ethan, like MacBeth, sleep no more? Will Gabe abandon him for permanent duty under Emma's bed? Or is there yet another monster waiting in the wings who can scare even Gabe back under Ethan's bed? In her sequel to her earlier hit, I Need My Monster (see review here) author Amanda Noll's brand-new Hey, That's MY Monster!,  (Flashlight Books, 2016) conjures up the ultimate take-charge monster that will have all brothers among the readers chuckling in recogition as Gabe's big sister Stella is summoned to scare them all straight.

It's all in good, sorta-scary fun well-stirred into a bedtime story just right for a pre-Halloween bedtime or story circle story. Artist Howard McWilliam has a blast with his luminously glowing main characters and his uber-creative, sometimes sarcastic, monster characters, done up in a palette that is perfect for the night-time setting, a sleepytime story that is never a snooze, but appropriately ends with not one, but two sleeping kids.

Bad Moon Rising? The Full Moon at the Napping House by Audrey and Don Wood

THERE IS A HOUSE,
A FULL MOON HOUSE,
WHERE EVERYONE IS RESTLESS.

Called the lunatic moon by the ancients, the rise of the full moon has a certain power in its white light--the power to make living things wakeful and--restless.

There is a wide-awake bed in that house, its pillows still plumped from the morning, its coverlet unturned, as Granny and her gold-striped cat gaze out the window at the moonrise.

A boy with carroty curls reaches under the chair for his own silver orb, his ball.

AND WITH THAT GRANNY
THERE IS A CHILD,
A FIDGETY CHILD
WITH A SLEEPLESS GRANNY
IN A WIDE-AWAKE BED.

A shaggy white dog rises from his rug and joins the ball game, while the cat glares at the two and Granny stretches and and stares wide-eyed at the ceiling. Even a little grey mouse appears on the wash stand and peers at something that has just landed on the bottom window sash.

The boy mounts the foot of the bed and tosses the ball to the dog, as Granny despairs of sleep and the cat stalks the mouse.

Granny covers her head as the prowling cat leaps for the wary mouse, who jumps for the windowsill, as the dog dives for the ball.

The bed is rumpled. The mouse is harried by the cat, and as the full moon rides high...

EVERYONE IS RESTLESS.
UNTIL...

A CHIRPING CRICKET
SINGS HIS ....
FULL MOON SONG...

and soon there's a soothed mouse, a calm cat and a drowsy dog, a snugly child and a sleepytime story from Granny...

IN THE FULL-MOON HOUSE

WHERE NO ONE NOW IS RESTLESS.

Twenty-six years after their award-winning classic The Napping House was published Author and illustrator pair Audrey and Don Wood have added a companion cumulative bedtime story, just published on September 1, The Full Moon at the Napping House (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015) is riding high in the firmament of notable stories for young children, this one a perfect bedtime story to bring the stories full circle. Don Wood's lovely moon-washed illustrations in a subdued palette of blues and lavenders repeat the full-moon's curve in the bed, the curled-up dog and cat and the mirror as Granny and child cuddle for the last page of the story and a welcome good night. A perfect sequel to a classic early childhood tale, together two stories which no child should miss.