We’ve shared plenty of books over the years that help teachers and librarians focus on social-emotional learning skills with their readers. It’s important to be able to recognize and regulate one’s emotions, but it’s also important to encourage positive emotions, peer-bonding, and joyful learning. All of those can come from a laugh-out-loud storytime! Scroll down to see some new picture books that are sure to bring mirth to young readers and build a positive association with books while fostering community.
If You Make a Call on a Banana Phone
“This delightfully silly story subtly guides kids through the art of broaching new friendships and careful listening.” — The Washington Post
A love letter to making friends from unexpected places, If You Make a Call on a Banana Phone is silly, wise, and surprising all at once.
If you make a call from a banana phone, who will answer? What will you talk about? Will you share secrets or ask questions? No one knows what will happen, really. This very silly story is full of the joy and wisdom that comes from making new friends from unexpected places.
Go ahead, pick up a banana and make a call. You’ll be glad you did.
Don’t Eat Eustace
Author-illustrator Lian Cho of Oh, Olive! and Pig Town Party delivers her third hilarious picture book about a bear and the fish, named Eustace, that they’re trying to make their lunch. But a dash of diversion, a pinch of luck, and the surprising power of friendship just might save Eustace after all!?
Today’s Lunch Special: Freshly caught fish.
Bear lives alone in a lighthouse.
Bear mends their clothes, sweeps the floors, and catches their own lunch.
Today’s lunch is Eustace.
Eustace would really like to live. (He has a girlfriend after all.)
Will Eustace be released back into the sea? Or will he end up in Bear’s stock pot?
Find out in this funny adventure filled with brilliant illustrations and lots of humor.
The Cave Downwind of the Café
Hilarious, surprising, and delightfully disgusting, the latest picture book from co-director of the acclaimed stop-motion tribute for Over the Garden Wall’s 10th anniversary, BAFTA Award–winning, and Oscar-nominated animation director Mikey Please expands the outrageously irresistible world of the smash hit, The Café at the Edge of the Woods.
In Glumfoot’s cave, there’s only one item on the menu: booger stew.
But he dreams of puff pastry and sweet sorbet.
Then one day, a human named Rene builds a nearby log cabin smelling of all the delicious foods one could eat.
But a local ogre thinks Rene smells rather tasty too! Can Glumfoot save Rene—and his chance at a decadent meal—with his quick thinking?
This riotously clever addition to the Café at the Edge of the Woods world will thrill fans of the first installment featuring Glumfoot, Rene, and the monstrous clientele of the café.
Z Is for Moose
An unjacketed, lower-priced hardcover edition of the acclaimed picture book. Caldecott Medalist Paul O. Zelinsky illustrates an outrageously silly story about the joys (and challenges) of friendship. Zebra wants to put on a show as simple as A-B-C, but Zebra’s friend Moose has other (unexpected and hilarious) ideas!
“Everybody will be elated with this goofy new way of going from A to Z.” —The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books (starred review)
Zebra thinks the alphabet should be simple. A is for Apple. B is for Ball. Easy! But his friend Moose is too excited to wait for his turn, and when M isn’t for Moose (Mouse gets the honor), the rest of the letters better run for cover. Exuberant and zany storytelling brings to life two friends and one laugh-out-loud comedy of errors that’s about friendship, sharing, and compromise.
The incomparable Paul O. Zelinsky’s artwork is bursting at the seams—literally—with preschool appeal. Breaking the borders of the page and creating his illustrations both digitally and traditionally, Zelinsky turns convention on its head. The result is a picture book that is innovative, hilarious, and begging to be read over and over again.