I’ve always been a goofball. When I was a kid, I was constantly getting in trouble for making my friends laugh in the back of the room. But then I would get out of trouble by making the teacher or the principal laugh. Humor and absurdity have always had a special place in my heart, and I love books like these that encourage us to not take ourselves quite so seriously!
I love this book because it takes something so universal (two kids deciding to dig a hole in order to look for “something spectacular”) and escalates it to the point of absurdity.
This book also does an incredible job of having the pictures tell a different story than the text, which is something that only picture books can do! Sam and Dave are constantly missing things that are super obvious to the reader (and the dog!), which creates lots of opportunities for laughs. My kids love this book, and I love reading it to them.
With perfect pacing, the multiple award-winning, best-selling team of Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen dig down for a deadpan tale full of visual humour.
From the award-winning team behind Extra Yarn, and illustrated by Jon Klassen, the Kate Greenaway-winning creator of This Is Not My Hat and I Want My Hat Back, comes a perfectly paced, deadpan tale full of visual humour. Sam and Dave are on a mission. A mission to find something spectacular. So they dig a hole. And they keep digging. And they find ... nothing. Yet the day turns out to be pretty spectacular after all.…
I read this book (and the others in the series) so many times when I was growing up. It was probably my first introduction to absurdist humor, and I fell in love. The book tells the story of Wayside School, which was supposed to be a one-story building with thirty classrooms but was instead built as a thirty-story building with one classroom on each level (except the 19th floor, which does not exist). The whole book is a love letter to absurdity, with teachers that turn children into apples, kids that get stuck to their chairs with chewing gum, and a yard teacher named Louis who dispenses valuable life lessons.
There has been a terrible mistake. Instead of having thirty classrooms side by side, Wayside School is thirty storeys high! (The builder said he was sorry.) Perhaps that's why all sorts of strange and unusual things keep happening - especially in Mrs Jewls's classroom on the very top floor.
There's the terrifying Mrs Gorf, who gets an unusually fruity comeuppance; Terrible Todd, who always gets sent home early; and Mauricia, who has a strange ice-cream addiction. Meanwhile, John can only read upside down, and Leslie is determined to sell her own toes.
Let’s be honest – most fairy tales are boring and predictable and lame. But not these! In this book, Jon Scieszka turns classic stories on their head and plays with the idea of what a fairy tale should (and could!) be. Instead of the Gingerbread Man, we get the Stinky Cheese Man. “The Princess and the Pea” becomes “The Princess and the Bowling Ball”, Little Red Riding Hood is replaced with Little Red Running Shorts, and the Really Ugly Duckling doesn’t turn out to be a swan after all – he just turns into a really ugly duck. This book cracks me up every time!
The entire book, with its unconventional page arrangement and eclectic, frenetic mix of text and pictures, is a spoof on the art of book design and the art of the fairy tale. The individual tales, such as The Really Ugly Duckling and Little Red Running Shorts, can be extracted for telling aloud, with great success. Another masterpiece from the team that created The True Story of the Three Little Pigs! -Horn Book
This book is such a fun example of taking something that could be seen as a limitation (for instance, the fact that you can only draw worms) and turning it into something more. The book is narrated by the author/illustrator, who explains that he can only draw worms.
He then introduces a cast of worms and tells us about their various adventures. But whenever he describes something non-worm-like (Worm Six is riding on a flying unicorn!) he quickly reminds us that he can’t draw those things, because he can only draw worms. Never fails to get my kids laughing!
A hilarious picture book in bright, neon colors that is perfect for fans of The Book With No Pictures and The Day the Crayons Quit.
This is part counting book, part introduction to worms, but all superbly silly. The fact that the author/illustrator can only draw worms will not take anything away from the laugh-out-loud adventure readers will have as they turn the pages of this slightly subversive picture book.
I was just recently introduced to this book by my friend Erica, and I love it so much! It’s a story that feels ridiculous and realistic at the same time. It starts out with a boy who is trying to distract his teacher long enough to avoid getting homework, but the plan backfires. Before we know it he’s gotten half the school in detention, started a nationwide trend, and gotten himself into the record books. It’s an ode to the power of silly ideas, and I can’t recommend it enough.
From bestselling and award-winning author Andrew Clements, a quirky, imaginative tale about creative thought and the power of words that will have readers inventing their own words.
Is Nick Allen a troublemaker? He really just likes to liven things up at school -- and he's always had plenty of great ideas. When Nick learns some interesting information about how words are created, suddenly he's got the inspiration for his best plan ever...the frindle. Who says a pen has to be called a pen? Why not call it a frindle? Things begin innocently enough as Nick gets his friends to use…
It's a tale as old as time: a kid wants to make a pizza with his dad, but not just any pizza . . . he wants a pizza with everything on it. That's right, everything. But as the toppings pile on, this father-son duo accidentally create a pizza so delicious, so extravagant, so over-the-top, that it destroys the universe—and the cosmos go as dark as burnt crust. Will anyone enjoy pizza ever again?
Follow along as a seemingly innocent request for a "pizza with everything on it" turns into an adventure that tests the limits of taste and space time!
My wife suggested we try scuba diving while on holiday in Grand Cayman. We were already falling in love with the island, and the incredible experience underwater opened a whole new world to us. From that moment on, our yearly travels changed completely. Our destination choices were now based upon diving opportunities. That was twenty years ago. Today, I’m a certified divemaster with dives all over the US (including Hawaii), the Caribbean (including Cuba), Australia, and even Iceland. Throw in my sense of adventure as a former race car driver, motorcycle rider, and outdoor adventurer, and I had plenty of personal experiences to create the AJ Bailey series.
Readers who enjoy police procedurals with an offbeat main character and fascinating locations will love this thriller.
One missing girl. Two lives on the line. Four treacherous challenges.
Nora Sommer's first case for the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service is one she'll never forget... if she survives. When the daughter of a wealthy businessman is taken, Nora is first on the scene and unwittingly 'chosen' by the kidnapper.
With the crime live-streamed across the internet, the eyes of the world are upon her as she faces a sequence of difficult challenges with the life of the kidnapped girl hanging on…
One missing girl. Two lives on the line. Four treacherous challenges.
Nora Sommer's first case for the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service is one she'll never forget - if she survives.
When the daughter of a wealthy businessman is taken, Nora is first on the scene and unwittingly 'chosen' by the kidnapper. With the crime live-streamed across the internet, the eyes of the world are upon her as she faces a sequence of difficult challenges with the life of the kidnapped girl hanging on Nora's success - or failure.
Deadly Sommer is the thrilling first book in the Nora Sommer…
