Books like Ling & Ting: Twice as Silly
By Grace Lin
For the kid who has a sibling or best friend they can be completely ridiculous with, Ling and Ting feel like old friends who happen to be learning to read alongside you. Playful, warm, and giggly, with short stories that make reading feel like a joke shared between friends.
A book with no pictures forces whoever reads it aloud to say every ridiculous word on the page — including BLORK, BLUURF, and a song about eating ants for breakfast.
A man with no sense at all lives backwards on purpose — moving into a tree to be closer to the ground and eating porridge on toast — until he meets an equally silly new friend.
A hippopotamus hiccups so hard he keeps toppling onto his bottom, and an elephant, a centipede, and a rhinoceros all try to find a cure before the chaos gets worse.
A child gets ten minutes to get ready for bed while a growing crowd of hamster tourists pours through the front door for a wild, wordless-countdown tour of the house.
A parade of rhyming oddballs takes readers from near to far and here to there — a bumpy Wump, a singing Ying, a winking Yink who drinks pink ink — with no plot but plenty of silly counting and rhyming along the way.
A determined bunny stacks cardboard boxes into an imaginary city, insisting on doing it solo — until building alone starts to feel like something's missing.
Two best friends spend a week of summer vacation at Eamon's grandparents' house, supposedly for Nature Camp — but waffles, video games, and staying inside turn out far more interesting than nature ever was.
A shark and a train face off in one absurd contest after another — bowling, Ping Pong, piano playing, pie eating — as two kids' toy chest imaginings spiral into gleeful, unanswerable competition.
A boy tours his own house room by room, discovering odd made-up creatures hiding in ordinary spots — a Wocket in his pocket, a Vug under his rug, a Yeps on the steps.
A hungry frog and a clever fly face off in six short comic-style chapters, with frog always seeming to win — until fly gets the last word.
A burglar creeps down the street, climbs the wall, and slips through the window on another night of stealing — until someone burgles him right back.
Dragons love tacos more than anything, so a party planner throws them a giant taco party — but forgets that spicy salsa turns dragons into fire-breathing disasters.
