Warning: Laughter is contagious! The animal friends dare the reader to make them laugh, but the ladybug and the bunny are sure that they won't laugh, no matter what. The monkey and the crocodile think it's impossible to make them laugh too. And the same goes for the bear and the wolf. Still, readers can go ahead and try . . . but will they succeed? Kids will giggle and chuckle as they find ways to make the animals laugh in this seriously funny sound book that includes seven big laughs.

Perfect for beginning readers, this laugh-out-loud joke book about creepy creatures will put a smile on your face!

An evolutionary and cognitive account of the science behind why we crack up—“one of the most complex and sophisticated humor theories ever presented” (Evolutionary Psychology). Some things are funny—jokes, puns, sitcoms, Charlie Chaplin, The Far Side, Malvolio with his yellow garters crossed—but why? Why does humor exist in the first place? Why do we spend so much of our time passing on amusing anecdotes, making wisecracks, watching The Simpsons? In Inside Jokes, Matthew Hurley, Daniel Dennett, and Reginald Adams offer an evolutionary and cognitive perspective. Humor, they propose, evolved out of a computational problem that arose when our long-ago ancestors were furnished with open-ended thinking. Mother Nature—aka natural selection—cannot just order the brain to find and fix all our time-pressured misleaps and near-misses. She has to bribe the brain with pleasure. So we find them funny. This wired-in source of pleasure has been tickled relentlessly by humorists over the centuries, and we have become addicted to the endogenous mind candy that is humor.

WINNER OF THE 2020 LAUGH OUT LOUD AWARDS Packed full of stupendously silly, fantastically funny and hysterically hilarious poems, this brilliant anthology is edited by dynamic poet, Joshua Seigal. Featuring a diverse range of contributors and some brand new poems from Joshua himself, this book is perfect for anyone who needs a giggle or a belly laugh! 'I think any reader would find it hard not only to avoid laughing, but to stop themselves reading the poems aloud – they are absolutely begging to be performed!' (Library Girl and Book Boy) Poets include: A.F. Harrold, Raymond Antrobus, Andy Seed, Sue Hardy-Dawson, Adisa, Kat Francois, James Carter, Jay Hulme and Lewis Carroll. Packed with laugh out loud illustrations by Tim Wesson, this follow up to I Don't Like Poetry (which was shortlisted for the 2017 Laugh Out Loud Awards) is a marvellous mixture of subversive humour and insight into the world of children.

"What if you could be much funnier and more likable than you are today? What if you could finally be that person in your group of friends delivering the funny lines and telling the funny stories? For the first time, conversational humor has been dissected like never before. Gregory offers step-by-step guidelines on what to say and how to say it. You won’t find theories or fluff here. Instead, you'll discover actionable techniques and strategies to dramatically improve your sense of humor and ability to be funny." -- Amazon.com

Britain’s hottest young comedian presents a seriously funny, up-close look at joking matters—from the social origins of laughter, to the art and craft of humor, to why we can never remember the punch line—featuring over 300 jokes. As the host of the hit game show Distraction (now in its third season on Comedy Central) and one of the premier stand-up acts working today, award-winning comedian Jimmy Carr has won over millions of fans around the world with his trademark rapier wit, laced with "exquisitely economical and perfectly timed one-liners" (The Guardian). For this book he teams up with friend and fellow comedy writer Lucy Greeves to take an in-depth look at where humor comes from and how it works, through exploring its purest form: the joke. Only Joking begins with the mechanism of laughter—how it happens and why even infants do it—then delves into the power of the punch line, exploring the basics of all jokes, from the use of shock and surprise to advanced stand-up techniques such as the "pull-back/reveal." Carr and Greeves go on to explore taboo humor, jokes that bomb, and the psychology of finding something funny. They look into the long-standing connection between politics and humor, and discuss the survival prospects for contentious jokes in the current political climate. Throughout the book they conjure up a supporting cast of colorful joke enthusiasts, from Sigmund Freud to Lenny Bruce, and discuss their influence on the jokes we tell today. Surveying across national, ethnic, and gender divides, this rollicking analysis of why joking will always be close to the human heart is an irresistible exploration of humor that makes clear why we need a good laugh now more than ever.

Do you feel like laughing? Then you'd better not read this book! There is no laughing allowed! Do you hear? NO LAUGHING!