The Purple Kangaroo

by Michael Ian Black, illustrated by Peter Brown

Simon & Schuster, 2010

$16.99, ages 4-8, 32 pages

In this goofy fun book by Comedy Central comedian Black, a monkey claims to be a mind-reader and tricks readers into thinking exactly what he wants them to.

When readers first meet the monkey, he appears be running a lemonade stand. But then he starts talking about reading their minds and it's clear he isn't selling drinks.

What this long-tailed wiseacre is "selling" is a joke, but first he's got to set it up and give readers a good mental image, in this case one so vivid that it will seem like their own.

The monkey, a slick fellow with a perma press smile, opens his routine using the element of surprise.

Hidden behind the lemonade stand, he calls out, "Hey Kid!… I can read minds. It's true. In fact, I can read YOUR mind."

Then he pops up from behind the stand, and slides a "Mind Reader" sign over the one reading "Lemonade" on the stand.

(Clearly this is a bit the monkey's done before.)

Next, he asks readers to think of something "so spectacular that nobody has ever thought of it in the entire history of thinking about things."

He plugs his ears and asks readers to say their thought out loud, assuring them that he can't hear anything they say.

After all, "I'm just a picture in a book."

Next, readers witness the monkey's "unusual, incredible, amazing, and slightly alarming magical powers" (his eyes spiral), as he makes a wild guess at what they're thinking.

"You were thinking about a purple kangaroo!" he exclaims.

Of course that wasn't what readers were thinking about and the monkey, like any smooth-talker, has already thought of what to say before readers can reply.

Pretending he needs to jar their memory of the kangaroo, the monkey launches into a succession of absurd details about the kangaroo.

You remember, he says emphatically,...

The monkey who was looking for his chinchilla friend Senor Ernesto de Pantalones while roller skating and juggling five fragrant bananas?

The one who blew an enormous bubble of rainbow gum out of his nose and was showered with gold coins for his feat?

The one who then used the money to hire a rhino to fly him in a paisley blimp into the stratosphere so he could search for his friend?

The one who found his friend waving a flag on the moon?

Well, he adds with a fit of laughter, you're thinking about it now!

A goof at heart, Black uses the craft of joke-telling, adds in a bit of absurdity and creates a book too silly to resist.

Black co-stars with Michael Showalter in Comedy Central's "Michael & Michael Have Issues."

Don't miss the hilarious video below of Black reading his book!

Wonderland

By Tommy Kovac and illustrated by Sonny Liew

Disney Press, 2009

$19.99, ages 13 and up, 160 pages

A Wonderland sequel that refers to Alice but doesn't bring her back might seem as curious as a grin without a cat -- especially, when the main character of the book is a lowly housemaid who was mentioned but didn't actually appear in the original Lewis Carroll classic.

But the moment you follow Mary Ann, the White Rabbit's housemaid, into Kovac and Liew's graphic version of Wonderland, you realize how perfectly sensical -- and clever -- it was to re-enter Wonderland without Alice and to choose this particular secondary character to fill her shoes.

As you may remember, in Chapter 4 of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the White Rabbit mistakes Alice for his handmaid Mary Ann and Alice begins acting like her even though she dislikes the idea of being thought of as a mere maid. In light of how offended and confused Alice was then, it's wonderfully ironic that Mary Ann is now the girl who journeys deep underground.

In this followup, Mary Ann -- a compulsive cleaner who sweeps her feather duster, a bird with a feather crest, over everything in her path, including the dirt path itself -- discovers that Alice created a lot animosity when she pretended to be her. Now it's up to Mary Ann to dust her way out of the mess, though Mary Ann is not at all happy about Alice's past impertinence. As you may recall, after Alice drank the potion that caused her to blow up in size, Alice kicked Bill the Lizard out of his master's chimney, then got in a fix with the Queen of Hearts, which in this sequel has made the queen extra feisty.

When we meet Mary Ann, she is running late to the rabbit's house and decides to take a back way (that proves to be a long way) through a hole in a tree. There she find the rabbit anxiously waiting to receive his gloves so he can tend to the queen. But just as the White Rabbit is about to leave for the queen's chambers, the clock in the house (which grins like the Cheshire cat) warns the rabbit that he's been incriminated for suspicious dealings. Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, sentenced to death for being ridiculous, have slandered the White Rabbit in order to spare themselves from being beheaded. They've told the queen that the rabbit secretly met with "the Alice monster" before she wrecked the queen's castle, and now the queen is so livid she wants to decapitate the White Rabbit instead.

Before Mary Ann and the White Rabbit have time to react, the Queen of Hearts shows up at the rabbit's house to have his head lopped off and gets into an altercation with Mary Ann (the queen accidentally soils Mary Ann's perfectly white apron with a cupcake so Mary Ann clocks her over the head with her scepter). Fleeing for their lives, Mary Ann and the White Rabbit head into the thick, dark Tulgey Wood. (Mary Ann assumes the queen now wants her head as well, though the rabbit insists maids are too forgettable for the queen to care about.)

Right away -- as you might expect from the Tulgey Wood, where the Jabberwock is said to dwell -- Mary Ann and the rabbit run into trouble. First the Cheshire cat appears in a tree and dupes the White Rabbit into reciting a curse (the Jabberwocky poem), which brings to life the monster "with eyes of flame." The Jabberwock, a dragon-like fellow with three green eyes and teeth like a piranha's, chases the rabbit into the queen's yard, where he's taken custody by her card soldiers. Then Mary Ann, who gets separated from the rabbit and remains in Tulgey Wood, falls into the Treacle Well and is led underground by ghouls (resembling old maids of the afterlife) to the deposed Queen of Spades.

The Queen of Spades, previously thrown into the well by a pair of hearts, decides to turn Mary Ann into her slave and just as Mary Ann is trying to figure a way out of the well, the White Rabbit falls from above. (The card soldiers were too queasy to behead the rabbit so they disposed of him in the well instead.) Soon, all manner of wondrous things, familiar and not-so-familiar, start to happen. The queen, king, Mary Ann and the rabbit sneeze on shrinking dust and become small enough to ride a pipe-puffing butterfly (the transformed Caterpillar character) out of the well. Once above-ground they return to normal size and crash land on the Mad Hatter's tea table. But now that the Queen of Spades is out of the well, will the two queens pull each other's hair out? And what's this talk of a Chaos Queen? A shift in power is afoot in Wonderland, and it'll take a pair of giant scissors to set things right.

It's not hard to sing Wonderland's praises. Even before it was published, all six chapters were nominated for the Eisner Award after being published as single-issue comics by SLG Publishing. This is a wonderfully wacky book and even if you don't read graphic novels, you'll find the humor irresistible and the richly colored cartoon panels (so full of physical humor you almost think the characters move on the page) too spectacular to miss.

Psst. Parents might want to sneak a read before passing this one along.

The Big Bad Wolf and Me

Written and illustrated by Delphine Perret

Sterling Publishing, 2006

$9.95, ages 4-8

A boy stumbles upon a big bad wolf who's lost his confidence and invites him to hole up in his closet until he's big and scary again in this wry, wonderful book by French author Perret.

When the boy finds the wolf moping on the sidewalk, he sizes him up with the bluntness of a child who hasn't yet learned how to filter what he says. First he assumes the wolf is a talking dog, clearly an affront to the wolf's storybook image.The wolf haughtily corrects, "I am the Big Bad Wolf!" but then feebly adds, "You know, the really scary one?" The boy responds by telling the wolf that he doesn't look scary or big and wonders if the wolf could just be sick.

The wolf, however, is only ailing from self-doubt. He tells the boy that no one believes in him anymore or thinks he's scary. "I'm done for," he adds dismally. So the boy suggests the wolf stop looking so sad and invites him home for chocolate chip cookies and to live in his bedroom closet.

But it isn't easy keeping the wolf a secret from Mom or getting the wolf to agree with the boy. (At one point the boy decides to rename the wolf Zorro because if he had a dog, he'd definitely name him Zorro but the wolf insists on being called by his real name Bernard; the boy tries to force the issue by withholding cookies from his lunch, but Bernard holds his ground.)

In time, the boy teaches the wolf everything he knows about being scary. He roars as loud as he can and makes a scary faces with a flashlight. But each time the boy acts scary, the wolf cowers under a pillow. So the boy tells the wolf to make five scary faces every day and gives him pep talks (for example, when the wolf fails to eat the boy's sister, the boy encourages him to go for it again).

Slowly, the wolf starts to feel more like his frightening self. He practices growling in the mirror and even tries to startle a girl outside his window, though she only sticks out her tongue. Eventually the wolf gets so good at being fierce that he chases the boy all the way to school and terrifies everyone on the school's front lawn. But will the boy ever stop calling him Zorro?

Told through whimsical line drawings and short dialogue, this is one of those books you protect a little more than others because you know your child will want to share it with their child someday.

The Big Elephant in the Room

Written and illustrated by Lane Smith

Hyperion Books, 2009

$16.99, ages 4-8

When a donkey asks his friend if they can talk about the big elephant in the room, the friend assumes he's speaking metaphorically and confesses all of the things he did behind the donkey's back but suspects he already knew about. Like the time he ate all of the ice cream in the freezer. And the time the he ran away and left the donkey with a bully.

The friend gets so carried away trying to predict which of the blunders the donkey is referring to that he doesn't give him a chance to finish what he's saying. Finally, after nearly every awkward gaffe is purged, the donkey interrupts with an exasperated, "No! No! No! I don't care about any of those things..," and points around the corner to an elephant watching cartoons in another room, "I was just asking about the big elephant in the room."

Adults will laugh at the double entendre. Of all the animals Smith could have chosen, he opted to have two donkeys, the Democratic Party symbols, talking about an elephant, the Republican Party mascot, just out of earshot.

This is one of those hilarious books that's as fun for adults to read as children. When I began it, I imagined Lane Smith nudging me in the ribs and teasing, "Come on, you know you have." And then I blushed, knowing all too well that he was right. Yes, -- on occasion -- I have avoided a subject that nobody wants to talk about, only to fret that it would one day bubble up. And as I admitted this to myself, I realized, this man is brilliant. He got me to squirm, then laugh myself silly -- all in the span of 32 pages.

Let's Do Nothing

Written and illustrated by Tony Fucile

Candlewick Press, 2009

$16.99, ages 4-8

Best buddies Sal and Frankie are game for just about anything, but when they run out of stuff to do, they attempt to do nothing at all and find with hilarious results that keeping their minds blank is impossible.

Having played every sport invented and every board game they could find, Sal and Frankie can't imagine what to do next. So they plunk down on the floor and Sal, the bellwether of the two, suggests they stop talking. "All right," submits Frankie flat on his back. "Ten seconds of nothing," to which Sal sits up as if he was spring-loaded. "That's it!" he declares, now on his feet like a showman about to belt out a tune. Beside him the title page announces, "Let's Do Nothing."

But doing nothing proves difficult for Frankie, whose imagination never slows down.

When Sal suggests they pretend to be statues in a park, imaginary pigeons perch all over Frankie and he flails his arms to shoo them away. So Sal tries again: "We'll be two giant redwood trees. You can do that." Always game, Frankie chimes back, "I can do that." But then an imaginary dog lifts his leg on Frankie the tree to go to the bathroom and Frankie the boy flies off the chair.

Sal's patience is thinning, but he's still not giving up. "You know the Empire State Building in New York?," he asks "You are it!" he encourages. No pigeon or dog can upset this plan, he adds. But what's that giant furry hand with an opposable thumb reaching up from below Frankie? King Kong has a grip on Frankie's tower and he's snatched off his glasses.

OK, reacts Sal, time for a new plan.

This time Frankie lays down on the floor as Sal piles building blocks on his body. No moving, no breathing, no blinking, Sal orders. But as Frankie screams for his friend's attention, Sal's frustration with Frankie boils over. But good friends that they are, their run-in lasts only a moment when inspiration hits. "That's it!" Sal beams. "We figured it out!...There's no way to do nothing! ...Let's do something!"

Any child who's ever found themselves sighing, "I don't know what to do," will laugh themselves silly reading Fucile's first children's book and after they're done might just fly off their chair and do something too.

Bobby Bramble Loses His Brain

By Dave Keane and illustrated by David Clark

Clarion Books, 2009

$16, ages 4-8

Little eyes will do loop-de-loops of delight as they try to keep up with Bobby and his brain somersaulting from one page to the next.

Bobby is a boy who has energy to spare; he loves to climb and bounce and isn't afraid to dive off buildings. In fact, he thinks he's too hard-headed to get hurt and he can outwit gravity despite his mother's warnings that he'll fall and crack open his head.

Then one day he goes too far, leaps out from the second story of his house and topples head-first. His head pops open and out runs his brain, beginning a chase through town to get it back.

Bobby's father announces a $20 reward for its safe return, spurring the whole town to scramble to get it back. But no one is clever enough. The family needs someone as fast, strong and brave as Bobby. They need Bobby, but his thoughts are all scrambled. So they give Bobby a whiff of the top of his head to put him on the scent of his brain and Bobby takes off on instinct, leaping after his most vital organ in a race of brain against braun.

This is one of those fantasies you give into with abandon. It's crazy wonderful fun and doesn't need credibility to work. What's more you don't wince as you'd think you might when Bobby's head cracks open. Keane makes the break in Bobby's noggin look like a canister lid popping open as the brain takes off in a sprint.