Vox Hunt: Funny Book

Share a book that made you laugh.

A Cheese and Tomato Spider Novelty Picture Book

Nick Sharratt

I am not kidding: I bought this pre-pre-schoolers' book when I was sixteen because I stood in a bookstore in Los Gatos, CA and got uncontrollable giggles everytime I turned the page.  When I realized I had to leave the store with the book, I told myself I'd just buy it for my 2-year-old [babysitting] charge.  Then I bought two copies, because I just couldn't imagine not having a copy for myself.

I think the most pathetic thing is: there's no plot.  It's literally a book full of horizontally bi-sected pages, with a bunch of adjectives on the top half and a noun on the bottom.  So, for instance, the example on the cover might say, "Delicious!  A cheese and tomato spider!"  Keep the spider on the bottom, flip the top page to reveal another picture, perhaps of a strawberry ice cream cone, and now the pages read "Look!  A creamy strawberry spider!"  Flip the bottom of the page to reveal an old lady, and all of the sudden you get, "Look!  A creamy strawberry granny!"

I'm sorry, but there's no logic to it: this book has me in stitches every time I read it.  And I have many, many wonderful memories of me and the boy I bought this book for, sitting on his bedroom floor randomly flipping pages with tears running down our faces, we were laughing so hard.