Books like 7 Ate 9: The Untold Story
By Tara Lazar
For the kid obsessed with detective shows and wordplay, this is a case file dressed up as a picture book — and it turns a playground rumor into a full-blown investigation. Noir-detective spoof, punny, deadpan-funny with a ticking-clock tension.
All the letters of the alphabet race each other up a coconut tree, chanting chicka chicka boom boom, until so many pile on that the whole tree tumbles them down.
A relentlessly cheerful stranger follows a grumpy skeptic everywhere, asking him to try green eggs and ham in a box, on a train, in the rain — anywhere, everywhere.
The Cat in the Hat whisks Sally and Dick on a rhyming tour of outer space, unpacking facts about the sun, moon, planets, and astronauts along the way.
A gang of robbers plots to steal every toy in London on Christmas Eve, but brave Officer Pugh springs into action to catch them — all except one crafty escapee, Grandma Swagg.
A man and his dog set out on a peaceful camping trip, but a marshmallow-loving bear sends them plunging down a mountain and racing down a river toward a waterfall.
A collection of children's own definitions for everyday things — a hole is to dig, a face is so you can make faces — told in the funny, backwards logic only kids have.
Bored with ordinary weather, a king orders his royal magicians to invent something new to fall from the sky — and gets a sticky green goo called Oobleck that soon overwhelms his entire kingdom.
A near-sighted little armadillo spots a shiny red boot and mistakes it for another armadillo, leaving his mother and three brothers to follow it straight toward a Texas rodeo.
A boy who loves animals introduces his fifteen pets one by one — and names almost every single one of them Bob, except for one very formally named turtle.
A picture book imagines what would happen if animals wore clothes — a snake loses its clothes, a billy goat eats them, and a walrus stays soggy in a wet suit that never dries.
A witch and her cat fly happily on a broomstick until the wind blows away her hat, bow, and wand — and the animals who return them all want a ride, leaving no room to spare when a hungry dragon attacks.
The numbers 1 through 100 race each other up an apple tree in a rhyming chant, piling higher and higher until bumblebees threaten trouble at the top.
