Review: Illustrations Add A lot For Your Littlest Reader
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 10, 2013
Of all of the joke books I've looked at for our little readers this one stands out for the youngest guy because it has very engaging illustrations that add an extra bit of oomph to the jokes.I've been reading all sorts of preschool, middle grade and YA books to beef up the family kids' library. I've also been using an older Kindle Touch to create a traveling library that has Kindle books for each age group, and then Kindle books aimed at each individual grandchild, (by interests or just because the hero or heroine has the same name and it's fun to read about somebody who has your name). Anyway, I just never paid attention to joke books until one of the kids started telling me Knock Knock jokes, about half of which he understood and all of which he thought were hysterical.So I thought, "hey, joke books". The words are basic and the sentences are simple. The word play can be sort of obvious, but it's still word play and it can sometimes be very clever. Knock Knock and answer and response jokes are actually interactive, since you take turns being the straight man. For a pre-reader or a brand new reader joke books can be the perfect way to have fun with books and words.Here, the jokes are mostly in the "Question and Answer" style, e.g. "What do you call a...?, Why did the ...? Where do you keep a ...?" That's great because a question builds up excitement for the punchline payoff, and half the time the kid gets the joke and the other half he giggles anyway because the joke is still fun as long as you try to sell it.And these are pretty good jokes, split about evenly between puns, ("Where does a sheep get a haircut? - the Baa Baa shop), and more advanced jokes.So, all in all these particular books strike me as very good examples of the form, and very much worth considering for your little reader. At the least, they should be good for a few nice laughs. Please note that I found this book while browsing Amazon Kindle freebies. I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.