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  • My Dad Thinks He's Funny by Katrina Germein
  • Deborah Stevenson
Germein, Katrina . My Dad Thinks He's Funny; illus. by Tom Jellett. Candlewick, 2013. 32p. ISBN 978-0-7636-6522-7 $14.99 Ad 5-9 yrs.

Some dads have their funny bits, but others are nonstop jokers from dawn to dusk, and so it is with the narrator's father. He's a wellspring of dorky humor, whether in his answers to common questions ("If anyone asks, 'How is it going?' Dad says, 'By bus'"), his responses to common occurrences ("If I fall, Dad says, 'Welcome home. How was your trip?'"), or his fondness for bathroom humor ("And when Dad says, 'Time for a special announcement,' we leave the room fast, before it really starts to smell"). There's no real trajectory here—though the sequence ends with nighttime, it doesn't even follow the events of a day, so there's not much shape or momentum to what is essentially just a list. It's a funny list, though, and Germain's extensive library of dopey dad sayings is sure to elicit recognition from youngsters who know somebody similarly given to jokes that have listeners simultaneously snickering and face-palming. The mixed-media art blends layered paper collage with thick, crayony lines and blotchy fill, gaining stylish design from precise and inventive compositions (including a helpful diagrammed instruction for an eye-roll). There's a plausible scruffiness to the adolescent-humored dad, who engages in some visual-only humor as well (making funny faces, holding drinking glasses up to his eyes like binoculars), and the resemblance is clear in the family's red heads and ski-jump noses. This will be a lively prompt for youngsters to share their own family's dumb jokes and collect some possibilities for dorky return fire.

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