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Ludlow Laughs
Unsuspecting Ludlow learns to smile and laugh in spite of himself, proving that laughter is indeed contagious.
32 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
58 people want to read
About the author
Jon Agee
53 books163 followersI grew up in Nyack, New York, just up the street from the Hudson River. In our house, there was always an art project going on.
My early drawings were very animated: a lot of stuff zipping around, airplanes, racing cars, football players. No surprise my first published drawing was a pack of rats running along a highway (The Rat Race). I did that for the New York Times Op Ed page when I was still in high school.
I went to college at The Cooper Union School of Art in New York City. I studied painting, sculpture and filmmaking, but what I loved doing most—in my spare time—was drawing cartoons and comic strips.
When I graduated, I hauled my pile of doodles into the offices of a bunch of editors, with the wild notion that somebody might publish them. When that failed, I wrote a story for kids to go with my pictures (If Snow Falls). It was two sentences long (which counts, by the way). Frances Foster, a wonderful editor at Random House, saw something in that book and signed me up.
The next book, Ellsworth, was about a dog who teaches economics at a university. When he gets home, he throws off his clothes and acts like a dog, which is fine, until some fellow teachers discover this and he loses his job. Somebody told me that Ellsworth was a story about "being yourself." I never realized it had a moral.
I moved to another publisher with Ludlow Laughs, the story of a grumpy guy who laughs in his sleep. This book was doing very poorly until the comedienne Phyliss Diller read it on PBS's Reading Rainbow. It stayed in print for over twenty years.
My fourth book, The Incredible Painting of Felix Clousseau, was a hit. One of the first people to see it and give it the thumb's up—literally, hot off the press—was Maurice Sendak. We bumped into each other at the printers. It was a lucky first meeting, and happily not our last.
That was all a long time ago. Since then I've written many other picture books, illustrated a few by other authors, and created a series of offbeat wordplay books, beginning with the book of palindromes, Go Hang a Salami! I'm a Lasagna Hog!
I visit schools across the country and sometimes around the globe. I live with my wife, Audrey, in San Francisco.
My early drawings were very animated: a lot of stuff zipping around, airplanes, racing cars, football players. No surprise my first published drawing was a pack of rats running along a highway (The Rat Race). I did that for the New York Times Op Ed page when I was still in high school.
I went to college at The Cooper Union School of Art in New York City. I studied painting, sculpture and filmmaking, but what I loved doing most—in my spare time—was drawing cartoons and comic strips.
When I graduated, I hauled my pile of doodles into the offices of a bunch of editors, with the wild notion that somebody might publish them. When that failed, I wrote a story for kids to go with my pictures (If Snow Falls). It was two sentences long (which counts, by the way). Frances Foster, a wonderful editor at Random House, saw something in that book and signed me up.
The next book, Ellsworth, was about a dog who teaches economics at a university. When he gets home, he throws off his clothes and acts like a dog, which is fine, until some fellow teachers discover this and he loses his job. Somebody told me that Ellsworth was a story about "being yourself." I never realized it had a moral.
I moved to another publisher with Ludlow Laughs, the story of a grumpy guy who laughs in his sleep. This book was doing very poorly until the comedienne Phyliss Diller read it on PBS's Reading Rainbow. It stayed in print for over twenty years.
My fourth book, The Incredible Painting of Felix Clousseau, was a hit. One of the first people to see it and give it the thumb's up—literally, hot off the press—was Maurice Sendak. We bumped into each other at the printers. It was a lucky first meeting, and happily not our last.
That was all a long time ago. Since then I've written many other picture books, illustrated a few by other authors, and created a series of offbeat wordplay books, beginning with the book of palindromes, Go Hang a Salami! I'm a Lasagna Hog!
I visit schools across the country and sometimes around the globe. I live with my wife, Audrey, in San Francisco.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
June 2, 2017
Read this to my students and they couldn't help but laugh along!
"Unsuspecting Ludlow learns to smile and laugh in spite of himself, proving that laughter is indeed contagious."
"Unsuspecting Ludlow learns to smile and laugh in spite of himself, proving that laughter is indeed contagious."
March 8, 2016
This book left a negative impression on my childhood. I deal with sleep hallucinations of shadow people moving around my room, they happened when I was young, and I am always afraid that there might be people in the room/house (a fear of strangers/break-ins). The idea of radio people coming in and recording Ludlow in his sleep disturbed me.
February 8, 2016
The contagion known as laughter....
Read
December 1, 2024Can't rate. There's something extra going on that I can't catch. And I'm very concerned that the poor guy works at a complaint department. I see it's a Reading Rainbow book, so I'll try again when our Children's Books group gets around to that.
October 25, 2017
My least favorite of the Agee books.
March 23, 2020
Reading Rainbow Season 7, Episode 4
January 5, 2021
A very good story to practice making inferences all the way through.
February 28, 2022
Very dark book about how to laugh at yourself.
March 13, 2024
Agee Assignment #22
Grumpy Geezer laughs in his sleep very loudly and other people laugh and then there is a weird ending. OK but quite weird.
Grumpy Geezer laughs in his sleep very loudly and other people laugh and then there is a weird ending. OK but quite weird.
November 30, 2025
This has got to be a book that's secretly about depression.
November 7, 2013
This book is about a man who was born with a frown. He was never happy until setting changed while he was sleeping then he couldn't stop smiling and laughing! He wanted to make everyone in the world laugh with him! This would be a good book to introduce speech bubbles.
February 20, 2008
This was cute. I liked how the guy read it on Reading Rainbow.
May 18, 2010
Laughter comes in Ludlow's sleep. His day job is at a complaint department. His laughter draws much attention, but his smile at the end presents hope.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews