11 funny picture books to read and reread together

I’m going to start with a book that I read as a kid. Well two books, actually, I can’t choose between them as I love them both. They entertained me and they entertained my own kids many years later. They speak very much to children and their anxieties. Two kids are left alone and have to cope with an anarchic intruder – The Cat – all the while worried about what their parents will say if the place is a mess when they come home. The Cat is fascinating – he’s an adult who behaves worse than a child and unleashes an ever-worsening spiral of chaos and madness, before putting everything right at the last moment. Full of rhyme and repetition and playfulness and featuring two of the greatest characters in fiction, Thing 1 and Thing 2. 

Zagazoo by Quentin Blake 

Everyone is familiar with Quentin Blake’s wonderful illustrations, but he’s also written several books himself. We give this one to any family members when they have their first child. Two young parents unwrap the gift of a tiny baby they call Zagazoo, but it keeps changing into a series of wild animals, like a warthog, a baby elephant, a hairy beast and a dragon, as they struggle to keep up with it. The book is a funny and fantastic allegory about having children and watching them grow up that ends with the Zagazoo becoming a lovely well-adjusted young man and the parents turning into elderly Pelicans. 

The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business by Werner Holzworth and Wolf Erlbruch 

This was a favourite of my kids, and I think must be one of the first books that has fun with animal poo. A mole discovers that somebody has left a deposit on his head and he interrogates all the other animals and studies their poo to find out who did it. Funny and informative. 

I love Tony Ross’s illustrations and his books about the spoilt little Princess are all very funny. This one is a great way for adults and children to laugh at children’s behaviour and is designed to help kids in their potty training. The Little Princess just doesn’t want to give it up. 

The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith 

There are lots of picture books out there that subvert traditional fairy tales (Roald Dahl did one called Revolting Rhymes). But this one is rather beautiful and clever and my kids loved it when they were a little bit older. Both the text and the illustrations are funny and sophisticated. 

I think there’s something about buses and animals that all kids love. So, picture books that bring the two together are sure fire winners. You Can’t Take an Elephant on the Bus also looks at all the other types of transport it would be absurd to take animals on (a camel on a sailing boat, a tiger on a train, a whale on a bike…) and the riotous consequences of trying. 

Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus is a very simple story, very simply drawn, about the negotiations that all parents have with small children. The pigeon pleads and wheedles and tells lies and makes outrageous claims in an attempt to be allowed to drive the bus, even though it’s been told it can’t. A great book for children and adults to share. 

I like rhyming in picture books, it helps give a natural rhythm to the reading, and you can have a lot of fun with unexpected rhymes. This book is a great combination of words and pictures – silly dogs in silly disguises, like little kids dressing up in their parents’ clothes – using clever and funny rhymes (a shiatsu doing jujitsu, for instance). There are lovely details in the colourful illustrations for kids to pore over. 

Stuck by Oliver Jeffers 

My picture book What’s that Noise? uses the classic picture book technique of repetition and addition that mimics kids’ games. This maybe started with my love of The Cat in The Hat, who goes to ever greater lengths to clean up the house, using more and more extreme and ridiculous methods. In Jeffers’ book a little boy tries to get his kite down out of a tree by throwing ever more fanciful, larger and more unlikely objects at it. Irresistibly funny. Like so many great picture books it presents an absurd world to kids as being perfectly rational. 

I couldn’t complete this list without putting in a book by my co-collaborator on What’s That Noise?, Nadia Shireen. I loved her first picture book, a play on the Big Bad Wolf story – the wickedly funny Good Little Wolf – and was very pleased when she joined our local pub quiz team and I got to know her. Her picture books are so full of character, colour and humour and in Barbara Throws a Wobbler children’s moods are personified in very funny illustrations. Her books are endlessly entertaining for kids and allow them to laugh at themselves. 

What’s That Noise? by Charlie Higson and Nadia Shireen is out now.