Humor

Michael Rosen’s Sad Book

With unmitigated honesty, a touch of humor, and sensitive illustrations by Quentin Blake, Michael Rosen explores the experience of sadness in a way that resonates with everyone. “Sometimes I’m sad and I don’t know why. It’s just a cloud that comes along and covers me up. Sad things happen to everyone, and sometimes people feel sad for no reason at all.” What makes Michael Rosen sad is thinking about his son, Eddie, who died suddenly at the age of eighteen. In this book the author writes about his sadness, how it affects him, and some of the things he does to cope with it—like telling himself that everyone has sad stuff (not just him) and trying every day to do something he can be proud of. Expressively illustrated by the extraordinary Quentin Blake, this is a very personal story that speaks to everyone, from children to parents to grandparents, teachers to grief counselors. Whether or not you have known what it’s like to feel deeply sad, the truth of this book will surely touch you.

Boston Globe-Horn Book Honors

Count Karlstein

Can you hear the distant howling of hounds and the thunder of ghostly hooves? It’s All Souls’ Eve and Zamiel the Demon Huntsman has come to claim his prey! He’s headed straight for Castle Karlstein, where the evil count has hatched an evil plan; he’ll sacrifice his two young nieces to save himself. Can Lucy and Charlotte outwit their uncle and his oily henchmen to escape their dreadful fate? From the award-winning author of The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife comes a spooky, funny thriller just right for those middle-grade readers looking for horror–and humor.  

Mediopollito: Cuento Tradicional en Espanol e Ingles/Half-Chicken: A Folktale in Spanish and English

Have you ever seen a weather vane? Do you know why there is a little rooster on the top, spinning around to tell us which way the wind is blowing? Here is the answer in this old, old story about a very special chicken. With only one eye, one leg, and one wing, Half-Chicken sets off to see the world. His adventures take him far and wide, until at last he’s carried straight to the top in this lively, humorous retelling, in Spanish and English, of a traditional folktale.

Tap Dancing on the Roof

A sijo, a traditional Korean verse form, has a fixed number of stressed syllables and a humorous or ironic twist at the end. Like haiku, sijo are brief and accessible, and the witty last line winds up each poem with a surprise. The verses in this book illuminate funny, unexpected, amazing aspects of the everyday–of breakfast, thunder and lightning, houseplants, tennis, freshly laundered socks.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume VII, Issue 2

 

My New Shirt

Receiving the yearly birthday gift from his grandmother has become David’s living nightmare. The “surprise” she always has for him never varies. How can he stop this never-ending flow of stiff, white, scratchy shirts — “perfect gentlemen” shirts that make him squirm and pull and shift and twitch? David closes his eyes and imagines a long line of shirts — one for every year of his life — stretching on forever. Then suddenly, without really intending to, he has done the unthinkable. “DAVID!” his mother screams. And when David opens his eyes, there are his mother, his father, and his bubbie staring at him. The shirt is no longer in his hands. He has thrown it out the window! Now it is out on the street, in the jaws of his dog, and the very merry chase is on. Bitingly funny and keenly observed, My New Shirt is graphically presented as a photo album commemorating David’s desperate act of liberation from a family tradition badly in need of a change.

Juan Bobo Goes to Work: A Puerto Rican Folktale

What can you do with a boy who tries to do things right but only leaves disaster in his wake? Readers everywhere will love to laugh at the hilarious antics of the ever-blundering Juan Bobo, Puerto Rico’s most celebrated folk character. In this rollicking Juan Bobo tale, our hero sets out to find work at the farm and the grocery. Although the tasks are simple and the directions couldn’t be clearer, he always find a way to bungle things up as only a character whose name means “Simple John” could!

A High Wind in Jamaica (New York Review Books Classics)

Richard Hughes’s celebrated short novel is a masterpiece of concentrated narrative. Its dreamlike action begins among the decayed plantation houses and overwhelming natural abundance of late nineteenth-century Jamaica, before moving out onto the high seas, as Hughes tells the story of a group of children thrown upon the mercy of a crew of down-at-the-heel pirates. A tale of seduction and betrayal, of accommodation and manipulation, of weird humor and unforeseen violence, this classic of twentieth-century literature is above all an extraordinary reckoning with the secret reasons and otherworldly realities of childhood.

Skin and Other Stories

This collection of short stories serves as an introduction to Roald Dahl‘s more mature work for a slightly older audience.

Skin — Lamb to the slaughter — The sound machine — An African story — Galloping Foxley — The wish — The surgeon — Dip in the pool — The champion of the world — Beware of the dog — My lady love, my dove.

The Absentminded Fellow

Leaping into a shirt and thrusting his arms into his pant legs, the Absentminded Fellow dashes out into the London streets, frantically hails a cab, rushes through the train station and right into an abandoned car. Three days later, to his surprise, he’s still in London…This droll character portrait will quickly have listeners chiming in on the chorus.

Wanda And The Frogs

On the way to school one morning, Wanda scoops some tadpoles into her sand pail. When she presents them to her teacher, the teacher agrees to let the class take care of them until they become frogs. But what will happen to the tadpoles once they grow legs and their tails begin to shrink? Wanda is worried. She wants to keep them. When she secretly moves the frogs into her own bedroom at home, Wanda’s family is in for a hilarious host of surprises. Sequel to Wanda and the Wild Hair.