toddler book suggestions

I love funny books. I especially enjoy books with surprising twists at the end, and the more surprising, the better. My Dada is always VERY excited about surprise endings (and by that I mean LOUD!), but my Mama is very good at explaining or asking me why the endings are surprising (she doesn’t seem able to entirely purge herself of her English teacher tendencies). I like reading with both of them because of these different styles.

Good books always have some kind of resolution at the end, but there are always those few special authors who seem to have a knack for creating better surprises than the rest. Here are a few of my favorites over the past two and a half years. They are ordered from less complex to more complex words/phrases/concepts, but I return to even the simplest books every once in awhile just because they’re still funny.

Peek-A Who? by Nina Laden: Page after page of surprises, with the very best surprise at the end! For the littlest readers.
But Not the Hippopotamus (Boynton on Board) by Sandra Boynton: Lots of repetition that I picked up on pretty quickly, and I love the last two pages. Two surprises! Mama likes the clever rhyme.
Where Is the Green Sheep? by Mem Fox and Judy Horacek: Tons of neat things to talk about in this book: colors, activities, counting sheep, and of course, the burning question, “Where is that green sheep?!” The big reveal is on the last page.
I’m The Biggest Thing in the Ocean! and I’m the Scariest Thing in the Castle by Kevin Sherry: These two books follow a similar pattern, but they are different enough that I liked them both. I still like to read Scariest Thing in the Castle every now and again.
Caps for Sale: A Tale of a Peddler, Some Monkeys and Their Monkey Business: The surprise in this book actually comes in the middle of the book. When I first started reading this book (we read the board book version first), Mama and I talked about the colors of the peddler’s hats and counted them, too.
The Monster at the End of This Book (Sesame Street) (Little Golden Book) by Jon Stone and Michael Smollin: A classic starring lovable, furry old Grover, but I love it because it’s interactive and lends itself to a very dramatic reading.
Pssst! by Adam Rex: A girl visits a zoo one day and the animals start asking her for things. She has no idea why she’s gathering all of this strange stuff, but we get to find out at the very end. I read this book over and over again right around when I turned two. Love it!
Jumpy Jack & Googily by Meg Rosoff and Sophie Blackall: My Mama gets the biggest kick out of this book. She keeps talking about “irony.” Despite the weird weighty word, however, I think it’s pretty funny myself and have been known to repeat the punchline ad nauseam. Mama uses different voices for the two characters (a scared, jumpy snail who thinks that there are monsters hiding everywhere and his friend, Googily, who happens to be a monster himself), and they’re pretty funny, too.