Books like The Doubtful Guest
By Edward Gorey
For families who find something delicious in the deadpan and the deeply odd, this is a houseguest who never explains himself and never leaves. Droll, eerie, Victorian, dryly funny — mischief played completely straight.
A little girl wakes up one Thursday with a full set of antlers growing out of her head, and while the doctor and school principal panic, the cook and kitchen maid find surprising uses for them.
A boy named Billy Bixbee finds a tiny dragon in his bedroom, but when his mom insists dragons don't exist, the ignored dragon just keeps growing bigger and bigger.
A girl and her mummy are just sitting down to tea when the doorbell rings, and a big furry, stripy tiger walks in and eats and drinks everything in the house.
A zombie girl who loves to dance enrolls in a ballet class for human girls, but stage fright before her first recital makes her fear her moans and groans will scare everyone away.
On a goat farm, a girl named Carla and her father Hector face a mystery when a goat turns up flat as a pancake — the legendary work of El Chupacabras, the fearsome goatsucker.
The messiest monster in Booville and her fussiest, cleanest neighbor argue constantly — until Harry Beastie's wild Halloween party throws these two feuding creatures together.
Three dust bunnies named Ed, Ned, and Ted love rhyming games — bug, rug, mug, hug — but a fourth named Bob keeps breaking the pattern, trying to warn them about a broom-wielding danger heading their way.
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 fun-loving king climbs into his bathtub and simply refuses to get out, no matter who arrives to plead with him to come rule his kingdom.
A New York City boy dreads his family's move out West, convinced he'll have to ride a horse to school, dodge buffaloes, and avoid cactus everywhere he sits.
A crew of pirates returns to Jeremy Jacob's backyard to dig up their buried treasure, but first they must quiet his wailing baby sister, Bonney Anne, whom they accidentally woke up.
On a distant planet, a red Smed and a blue Smoo fall in love despite their families' rule that Smeds and Smoos never mix, sending both sides on a journey that tests old prejudices.
