Children's Books discussion

Let's enjoy some levity this March when we will explore humorous picture books. Please vote for the six books you would most like to read with the group. Please choose from the official nominations in messages 2-26 and post your six choices in a comment below. Ideally, selections will include at least a few picture books for the youngest picture book crowd as well as a few that might be of interest to the upper levels of the picture book audience.

***Voting extended through February 20th. Thank you! :-)

Great genre! What immediately comes to my mind is:
The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka

I want to nominate The Book with No Picture but, as the title suggests, it has no pictures so isn't technically a picture book. But it is quite funny.

Margie Palatini's books almost always make me lol, especially Bad Boys (and its sequels).

I also adore Chester and the other meta books by Mélanie Watt.

I'll come up with more soon. I love humorous picture-books and will def. need to giggle come March.

Of course any of Mo Willems Elephant & Piggie books would fit, but they're so well known I'm just adding them to the master list and am *not* nominating them.

I would love to nominate The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales. One of the most hilarious books I have read. Jon Scieszka takes traditional fables and puts hilarious spins on them.

Stinky Cheese Man is hilarious; I agree. The Caldecott committee thought it was so good they gave it an award... which means we've already (recently) discussed it in this folder. I hope we stick to books that are new to the group discussions. :)

Another one for the master list, in case anyone hasn't read it yet, is The Monster at the End of this Book (but again, I'm *not* nominating it, as I'm sure it's not new to very many of us).

I do nominate:
I Love You Already!
Ernest, the Moose Who Doesn't Fit
The Cowboy and the Black-Eyed Pea
Battle Bunny
Maude: The Not-So-Noticeable Shrimpton
A Is for Musk Ox
Cheetah Can't Lose.

(Please let me know if we've already discussed any of these, or if they're overwhelmingly familiar to group members!)

Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing
Animals Should Definitely Not Act Like People With Cassette
Mr McGee and the Blackberry Jam
Aliens Love Underpants
The Secret Knowledge of Grown-ups
The Great Nursery Rhyme Disaster

A couple of poetry books:
Take Me Out of the Bathtub and Other Silly Dilly Songs
Mary Had A Little Jam: And Other Silly Rhymes

Parts
The Wonky Donkey
Good Night, Already
The Princess and the Pig
Dragons Love Tacos

Probably well known but The Day the Crayons Quit. And The Day the Crayons Came Home.

It's an Orange Aardvark!
Little Penguin Gets the Hiccups

And I am really excited for this topic!!!

As a kid, I loved Wacky Wednesday.

If you like wordplay, The King Who Rained is fun.

Gosh, I'm having a hard time adding anything to the list (I see a few I would recommend nominated already). Im excited to see what list we all put together and I'm really excited about this topic, too!

Our favorites to giggle at at home are:
The Book with No Pictures
Dooby Dooby Moo
and
Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

Oh!!! And Here Comes the Easter Cat!!! So funny. (I also just read and loved Here Comes Valentine Cat though that will be a bit passé come March.)

I really liked
Mother Bruce

Humor you say? Might I suggest the Froggy books by Jonathan London ?


Froggy Goes to School
Froggy Goes to the Doctor

These books were always a read-aloud favorite when I was younger.

These nominations all look like so much fun! Thanks, all, and keep them coming! :-) Incidentally, I'm so happy to see several of our newer members coming in with nominations. The more the merrier! Great to have you aboard.

How about The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash?

Lauren wrote: "Humor you say? Might I suggest the Froggy books by Jonathan London ?


Froggy Goes to School
Froggy Goes to the Doctor

These books were always a read-alo..."

Another pair of books I had forgotten about were the ones by Arnold Lobel ! :)

Frog and Toad Are Friends
Frog and Toad Together
Mouse Soup
Mouse Tales

Love these more than the Froggy books! The audio versions (done by the author) were incredible... and funny!! :D

Pancakes for Findus
When Findus was Little and Disappeared
Pettson Goes Camping
Festus & Mercury Wishing to Go Fishing
and others by Sven Nordqvist are wonderful.

But I'm adding them for the sake of the master list only; they're unfortunately too difficult to find in libraries in the US.

Cheryl wrote: "Pancakes for Findus
When Findus was Little and Disappeared
Pettson Goes Camping
Festus & Mercury Wishing to Go Fishing
and others by [auth..."

Pancakes for Findus was republished in the US in 2015 as "The Birthday Cake". The ISBN is 9780735842038. When I search on OCLC for libraries that have it, there are 770 library systems which own a copy of that one.

The rest of them are still pretty obscure though. I had "Pancakes for Findus" on a 'to buy' list for quite awhile and then was startled to see the same cover come across my desk here at work with a different title. :)

May still not be common enough to include, but, at least that one has been lifted out of nearly total obscurity.

Good news, thank you!

There's also this Listopia list that has some interesting selections, for the master list: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

Here's an actual nomination: Once Upon a Cool Motorcycle Dude. Better for schoolchildren than tots.

Some of my other favorites (culled from my Read books at librarything) have been:

Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge (more of a subtle, gentle humor; not exactly 'funny')
Harriet, You'll Drive Me Wild! (similarly, a tender humor not lol)
Cinder Edna (no frilly princess wanna-be here!)

Irving and Muktuk: Two Bad Bears and Bongo Larry and anything by Daniel Pinkwater - truly lol funny

Comic Adventures of Boots (schoolchildren)
Armadilly Chili Little Red Hen with a friendly twist.

Guess Again! If you've not read this yet, you must. But take your time with it, concentrate & focus, don't spoil the experience by just flipping through it.

(These are actual nominations; I'd love to read them again if they're chosen.)

Falling for Rapunzel
How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night?
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
The last two especially may be too well known already to be interesting, but famous for a reason.

Some of the funniest books are the interactive and meta. I've 'read' Press Here, Hervé Tullet, lots, and it gets to me every single time. Imo, it's the standard to which the others are compared.

Jan Thomas also writes popular funny books, including the beloved Rhyming Dust Bunnies.

Thanks to all for the great nominations! Now we have the hard choice of selecting just six of these nominations for our official club reads. Please vote for the six books you would most like to read with the group. Please choose from the official nominations in messages 2-26 and post your six choices in a comment below. Ideally, selections will include at least a few picture books for the youngest picture book crowd as well as a few that might be of interest to the upper levels of the picture book audience. Votes will be accepted until February 18th. Thank you!

The Cowboy and the Black-Eyed Pea
A Is for Musk Ox
Cinder Edna
Armadilly Chili
Falling for Rapunzel
Pancakes for Findus

Okay, so here are my votes!


The Book with No Pictures
Frog and Toad Are Friends
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (*I should have nominated, "If You Give a Pig a Pancake" but I had forgotten I read that one too ...)
Froggy Goes to School
Mouse Soup
Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
Cinder Edna

Considering that only two people have voted so far, maybe it would be better to keep the voting period open for a few more days.

Also, since this has been increasingly an issue for the non Caldecott months, maybe a group message posting about the "voting period" being open is as necessary and perhaps even more so than the group message to members when the poll for the themes is open.

Hmm...
Well, I'm not voting because I'm glad to read anything that gets chosen. Most titles do seem to be available at my libraries.

Oh shoot..this week was extremely busy for me. I'll post my votes now, but if I am too late, I understand. Sorry! I am excited for this topic.

Armadilly Chili
Guess Again
Cinder Edna
The Wonky Donkey
Dragons Love Tacos

Manybooks wrote: "Also, since this has been increasingly an issue for the non Caldecott months, maybe a group message posting about the "voting period" being open is as necessary and perhaps even more so than the group message to members when the poll for the themes is open."

I do occasionally send out messages to alert about voting periods for the theme and it doesn't generate much greater response. At best it would generate more members interested in participating in the club--which is a good thing! But then I sometimes feel those messages (in the past) tended to pull in a few folks who aren't really invested in the club and just vote because it came into their inbox--not sure if that's a fair assessment but it does seem to happen sometimes. If anyone has joined the club because of these messages in the past, and just likes being a "fly on the wall" reading along but not commenting, that's no problem but please let me know! I love welcoming new members to the club it's and like to know that the folks really are interested and not just voting one time because a message popped up in their in-box and it seemed like something to do in the moment but never participate in our reads. I guess I just prefer that, even if we have fewer votes, they are from truly interested members who plan to read along with us. I kinda figured that folks really interested would read the threads and see the nominations/voting updates? We had many nominations this month and all those folks should be "tagged" to receive the message that it's time to vote so perhaps they just feel as Cheryl does and will be happy reading whatever is chosen. I hope that's the case :-)

And, yes, Jenny, I will accept your votes. :-)

If anyone else missed voting earlier I will go ahead and extend the voting period through tomorrow. It's a holiday weekend here in the US so maybe some of you are out of town or busy. I'll also sticky post this so it will be listed first.

I never saw the first post inviting us to list nominations. And I have been on goodreads and posting in the picture book club (February's thread) several times the past couple of weeks, but I still never saw this thread in the 5 that pop up on the main screen. And I don't normally go beyond the main screen. Fortunately, I saw this today so that I can vote!

I Love you already
Battle Bunny
Mother Bruce
Once Upon a cool motorcycle dude
falling for Rapunzel
Rhyming dust bunnies

Oops, forgot about the voting part!

Mother Bruce
Falling for Rapunzel
Battle Bunny
Cinder Edna
Pancakes for Findus

I've already read a few of those, but liked them enough to like reading them again. :)

Beverly, thank you for the information. We'll have to consider maybe putting this thread higher up or something.....

Beverly wrote: "I never saw the first post inviting us to list nominations. And I have been on goodreads and posting in the picture book club (February's thread) several times the past couple of weeks, but I still..."

Thanks for mentioning this, Beverly. I'm sorry you missed the thread and I imagine that may be a problem for other members, too. I believe we were simply suffering from "too much of a good thing" as we had four threads tagged as permanent threads (such as group business) and that left only one more space for a monthly thread which is taken up by the current month and thus doesn't show the nominations/voting thread. Even if new discussions appear on the group update emails I can imagine that it's easy to forget or miss that when it doesn't appear on the home page. I noticed this in the past and wasn't sure what thread to "demote" but I talked it over with Cheryl and decided that the "Themes" thread will no longer be one of our "mark this thread as important" top-five threads. We don't get much participation on that thread anymore and I will simply call members' attention to it each time we do a themed month so that folks can remember to add theme nominations if they want to then. I'm hoping this will help all of our members see both the current and upcoming month's discussion in the PBC and help encourage more participation :-)

And here are the books we will read together in March:

Mother Bruce
Cinder Edna
Falling for Rapunzel
Pancakes for Findus
Armadilly Chili
Battle Bunny

I look forward to LOL-ing with you all next month ;-)

I was able to request The Fox Hunt, aka Fox Chase, aka Findus and the Fox.... In this translation Pettson is named Festus, and Findus is named Mercury. But the pictures need no translation!

I love the picture of the hens getting shooed into their shelter. In their haste they abandon their little cups & saucers, and one even drops an egg that she was beginning to lay when interrupted.

Hi! I'm new to this group. Is there another thread with the vote results?

Yes. In fact, the results are actually right here, just two posts up. The other thread, in which we discuss the winning books, is in the same folder as this, similarly titled. It's currently sticky on both the home page of the group, and at the top of this folder as it shows on the page of folders that goodreads labels "discussions."

Welcome!

Thanks! I found it!

Xaka wrote: "Thanks! I found it!"

Glad to have you aboard, Xaka!

I Do Not Eat Children

(view spoiler)[Well and yes, my inner child is indeed totally smiling gleefully and appreciatively at I Do Not Eat Children, at the first picture book where Windsor, Ontario based Marcus Cutler acts as both author and illustrator (and which was published in February 2024). But to be certain, she is also sticking her tongue out rather sardonically and derisively at my older adult reading self and how I am kind of freaking out a bit since in I Do Not Eat Children it is being pretty clearly being insinuated and also visually shown by Cutler with a disappearing group of ethnically diverse children (going from ten to one so that I Do Not Eat Children also functions like a counting book, but with children to be counted and not numbers/letters) that the staring orangey, goofy looking monster contrary to its repeated claims of not eating children is in fact consuming them one by one (including a chubby little baby and a wheelchair user, nothing overt, no depictions of blood and gore, to be sure, but the children are definitely going "poof" in some nefarious manner, leaving their bugle, wheelchair, skateboard, soccer ball etc. behind and with the monster also belching rather loudly and ejecting wheels, socks, glasses, a baseball cap, leaving my above mentioned inner child giggling and chortling helplessly, but with this all actually bothering me as an adult just a trifle, albeit both of us majorly do appreciate and find the twist ending of I Do Not Eat Children sweetly amusing, and how the final child turns the tables on the monster, as she does like she says make meals for herself out of liars).

Love, love, love the counting down of aspect I Do Not Eat Children, as well as how the orange creature, how the monster keeps protesting and claiming that it does not eat children (and even turning to the reader/listener and wondering if they are the ones who eat children). And while Marcus Cutler's digitally rendered (on an iPad) illustrations for I Do Not Eat Children do take a bit of getting used to and are also rather one-dimensional and lacking both motion and feeling, they are still nicely colourfully fun, so that yes indeed, especially for my inner child and any potential discomfort from older adult me absolutely notwithstanding, I Do Not Eat Children and the combination of Cutler's text and artwork is solidly and joyfully five stars. But no, no, no, I really and most definitely also do totally consider I Do Not Eat Children as simply engagingly fun and will not ruin potential reading/viewing pleasure by trying to find anything deep or philosophical, although I guess that the ending of I Do Not Eat Children with the one remaining child turning the tables on the monster could be seen as a message against telling falsehoods, but that is probably searching just a bit too much and wanting to turn all picture books into morality lessons (and which in my not so humble opinion is anally retentive and ridiculously silly). (hide spoiler)]

The Scariest Kitten in the World is also meta, funny, and it shows my favorite theme, Another Point of View. I gave it four stars.

A Visit from St. Alphabet


A fun take-off of Clement Clark Moore's A Visit from St. Nicholas (The Night Before Christmas) using penmanship, letters, syntax etc., nicely punning, with fun illustrations (at times a bit tedious, but four stars and highly recommended).

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Ode to Underwear


With their 2013 rhyming picture book Ode to Underwear (and no, I have not read the 2024 edition since it is not available on Open Library) Helaine Becker (text) and Mike Boldt (artwork) have created an irreverently humorous, rollickingly poetic both verbal and visual celebration of around twelve different types of underpants, showing that when the family is gone, their sentient and magically alive underclothes come out to play, to cavort and with each pair textually being shown by Becker as unique in their own specific ways (all gaudily and hilariously expressively depicted by Boldt with broadly smiling faces, stick limbs and each pair of underpants having and showing very distinct aesthetic personalities as well), and with young readers and/or listeners following the bouncy rhythm of Ode to Underwear as different kinds of undergarments are shown by text and images as having all kinds of fun, fun, fun around the house (well, at least until their owners return home and which occurs on pages twenty-four and twenty-five of Ode to Underwear).

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Manybooks wrote: "Ode to Underwear


With their 2013 rhyming picture book Ode to Underwear (and no, I have not read the 2024 edition since it is not available on ..."

That sounds quite amusing. I'm sure my boys would love it! I'll try to find a copy ;-)

Kathryn wrote: "Manybooks wrote: "Ode to Underwear


With their 2013 rhyming picture book Ode to Underwear (and no, I have not read the 2024 edition since it is..."

It is available on Open Library. And there is also a 2024 edition which I have not read (but this one looks like it has a different illustrator).