A book can help with
For no reason at all, except that laughing together is good for everybody.
Not every book needs a job to do. Some are just for the joy of them, and a household that laughs together in the evening is doing something as valuable as any careful conversation about feelings. Silliness is good for children, and it’s good for the grown-up reading aloud too.
These are the ones to reach for when nothing in particular is wrong and you simply want twenty minutes of nonsense. They’re also, quietly, the ones that turn a child into a reader, because a book that made them laugh until they couldn’t breathe is a book they’ll come back to.
Here’s what I’d reach for. Find your child’s age and start there.
Giggling out loud
For the very youngest, the joy is in the sound of it: the rhythm, the repetition, and the bit where you do the voice.
A square dance called by a fiddle-playing cow, in a rhythm so strong you end up chanting it whether you meant to or not. There is nothing in it beyond the pleasure of the noise and the moving about, which is the whole point at this age. Very hard to read sitting still.
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The zoo keeps sending unsuitable pets, each hidden behind a flap to lift, until at last the perfect one arrives. The joy is all in the anticipation and the lifting, and toddlers never tire of it. A first-favourite book in a great many households.
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Proper nonsense
Now they can follow a joke and see it coming, which is the very best bit. These are riotous read-alouds.
Duncan’s crayons have had enough and write him letters of complaint, each in its own indignant voice, from overworked red to unused pink. It’s clever and very funny, and it’s a gift to read aloud if you enjoy doing voices. Children ask for it over and over.
or on Bookshop.org
A cat explains the strict rules about which animal sits on what, and the rhymes get sillier and sillier until the final joke lands beautifully. The rhythm makes it enormous fun to perform, and children shout the rhymes before you get to them. Pure, well-crafted daftness.
or on Bookshop.org
Laughing out loud
Older children love a book that makes them properly laugh, and these are the ones that turn a wobbly reader into a keen one.
Mr and Mrs Twit are horrible, filthy and forever playing revolting tricks on each other, until the monkeys get their own back. It’s gleefully disgusting in the way children adore, and short enough to race through. A reliable cure for a reading slump.
or on Bookshop.org
A wolf, a snake, a shark and a piranha decide to become heroes, with disastrous and very funny results, told in a fast comic-book style. It’s silly, snappy and enormously popular, and the pages turn themselves. Excellent for a child who says they don’t like reading.
or on Bookshop.org
Books that are simply a pleasure
Not every book on this page is trying to help with anything. Sometimes a child just needs one that is a good time from the first page to the last, and at eleven that usually means funny or fast.
Prez is in a children’s home and has stopped speaking when a small person only he can see turns up claiming to be an alien, with a plan to save the Earth by listing the ten best things about it. Very funny and quietly moving, and that list is the whole heart of it.
or on Bookshop.org
Percy discovers he is the son of a Greek god, is packed off to a summer camp full of demigods and sent on a quest with a satyr and a daughter of Athena. Fast, funny and completely undemanding in the best sense. Children finish it and immediately want the next one, which is worth a great deal.
or on Bookshop.org
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Something to do together
A page of daft challenges to do together: best joke, worst face, silliest walk to the kitchen. I’m making it now, and it will live here soon.
A book that makes a child laugh does two things at once: it lifts the mood of the whole house, and it quietly teaches them that reading is a pleasure rather than a task. Both are worth a great deal.
So read these for absolutely no reason, do the voices badly, and let bedtime run five minutes late for the sake of a good giggle. Not everything has to be a lesson.
For you, the grown-up
There’s a companion page for grown-ups over on the main Book Quote Therapy library, with books for adults looking for a bit more joy.
Read the grown-up version →These pages are written for the grown-ups looking after a child: parents, teachers and carers. A good book can sit beside a worried child, though it never stands in for a real conversation, or for proper support when something feels too big to carry alone.