Books like Imogene's Antlers
By David Small
Imogene's Antlers wakes a girl up with a full rack of horns on her head, and nobody blinks quite right except the cook, who just starts hanging pots off them. Your kid will want to know exactly what she has for breakfast that day. The books below are for kids who like their mornings a little strange.
Grown-ups deny the obvious in both books, but here denial makes the problem grow bigger, literally. There's No Such Thing as a Dragon by Jack Kent turns disbelief into the whole joke.
A young girl visits her eccentric grandfather, where nothing is normal — tea comes in flower pots, and cleaning the house means mowing the rug.
A Very Special House by Ruth Krauss keeps that same anything-goes joy, but stretches it into a whole house where nobody ever says stop.
Antlers just showed up and upended breakfast. The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss lets a stranger show up and upend the whole house, no explanation needed either.
If your kid loves imagining their way into a wilder version of themselves, Skippyjon Jones Snow What by Judy Schachner sends a cat-who-thinks-he's-a-dog into his own fairy tale.
A young princess falls ill and declares she'll only get better if she has the moon, sending the king's wisest advisors scrambling until the court jester finds an answer no one else thought to try.
Save Robo-Sauce by Adam Rubin for when your kid wants gadgets and gasps, not gentle whimsy. That fold-out ending needs room to sprawl.
A student gets stuck with a science curse after his teacher claims poetry is everywhere in science, and suddenly every rhyme in his head turns into a poem about amoebas, black holes, or the food chain.
Same bedtime energy and repetition, but Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein lets the kid barge into the story herself instead of just growing something odd overnight.
Where Imogene's family can't see what's obviously on her head, Three Jovial Huntsmen by Susan Jeffers has three hunters staring right past every animal in the forest.
Grab The House Takes a Vacation by Jacqueline Davies for that same everyday-thing-goes-strange feeling, but stretch it to a whole house arguing about where to go.
If the fun was watching one problem cause another, Clever Jack Takes the Cake by Candace Fleming strings a whole cake's worth of disasters into one boy's very bad day.
