Funny Books

Murph Cooper, eleven, is out of his depth when his mother unknowingly enrolls him in a school for superheroes, but his normalcy may be just what is needed to defeat King Nektar.

Presents a collection of humorous stories from over two dozen contemporary female writers, as well as autobiographical essays, comics, poems, and comic strips.

"For over forty years, Ellen Raskin's Newbery Medal-winning The Westing Game has been an enduring favorite. This highly inventive mystery involves sixteen people (including a dressmaker, a secretary, an inventor, a doctor, a judge, a bookie, a burglar, and a bomber) who are invited to the reading of the very strange will of the very rich Samuel W. Westing. They could become millionaires, depending on how they play the game. All they have to do is...

Stanley Yelnats is under a curse. A curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather and has since followed generations of Yelnatses. Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys' detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the boys build character by spending all day, every day digging holes exactly five feet wide and five feet deep. There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. But there are an awful lot of holes. It doesn't...

Things get out of hand for a twelve-year-old boy when a neighbor convinces him to expand his summer lawn mowing business.

Franny K. Stein is a mad scientist who prefers all things spooky and creepy, but when she has trouble making friends at her new school she experiments with fitting in--which works until a monster erupts from the trashcan. Franny K. Stein is not your average girl. She prefers poison ivy to daisies, and when Franny jumps rope, she uses her pet snake. The kids in Franny's class think she's weird, wacky, and just plain creepy. Tired of being stared at,...

"Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory is opening at last! But only five lucky children will be allowed inside. And the winners are: Augustus Gloop, an enormously fat boy whose hobby is eating; Veruca Salt, a spoiled-rotten brat whose parents are wrapped around her little finger; Violet Beauregarde, a dim-witted gum-chewer with the fastest jaws around; Mike Teavee, a toy pistol-toting gangster-in-training who is obsessed with television; and Charlie...

Ramona Quimby is excited to start kindergarten. No longer does she have to watch her older sister, Beezus, ride the bus to school with all the big kids. She's finally old enough to do it too! Then she gets into trouble for pulling her classmate's boingy curls during recess. Even worse, her crush rejects her in front of everyone. Beezus says Ramona needs to quit being a pest, but how can she stop if she never was trying to be one in the first place?...

"Leroy Ninker has a hat, a lasso, and boots. What he doesn't have is a horse--until he meets Maybelline, that is, and then it's love at first sight. Maybelline loves spaghetti and sweet nothings, and she loves Leroy, too. But when Leroy forgets the third and fiinal rule of caring for Maybelline, disaster ensues. Can Leroy wrestle fate to the ground, rescue the horse of his heart, and lasso loneliness for good?"--jacket.

After Mercy the pig snuggles to sleep with the Watsons, all three awaken with the bed teetering on the edge of a big hole in the floor.