Silliness is powerful. Kids love to be silly with the grown ups in their lives. And I’ve noticed that just a little bit of zany will go a long way towards fostering a fun relationship with a little person you generally have to boss around and discipline all.day.long.
Even though I know that a few silly interactions peppered throughout our days brings new closeness to our relationships, silliness doesn’t come naturally to me most days. The to-do lists, the heavy nature of life some days, the exhaustion…it all kind of wipes away any desire for to be even a little bit goofy. So, like I do for many dilemmas in life, I turn to books. There are so many great silly books that both you and the children you love can enjoy together! Here are a few we’ve found recently on our library trips.
We Forgot Brock! – A little boy named Phillip has an awesome imaginary friend named Brock. Brock looks like a cross between a pirate and a rock star, but only Phillip can see him. That is, until Phillip accidentally leaves Brock behind somewhere, and Brock adopts more friends. The ending is happy and the whole book cracks us up.
Matilda’s Cat – Matilda thinks her cat likes all kinds of fun things. It turns out, she doesn’t know her cat so well. But Matilda’s cat knows her!
The Legend of Rock, Paper, and Scissors – Though a bit wordy, this book will have the grown ups laughing and the kids sort of laughing and sort of scratching their heads.
Mo Willems’s Elephant and Piggy Books (especially, We are in a Book!) – It’s really the illustrations that will get you every time in the Elephant and Piggy books. Even very young listeners will laugh.
The Bink and Gollie Series – Oh, how we love Bink and Gollie. They are fun to read ourselves, but our library also has these books on CD, and let me tell you, they are hilarious. All my kids are crazy about them, but Violet (age 2) is the one who currently listens to them nonstop. Bink and Gollie is part of our family culture. “Use your gray matter, Bink,” is now synonymous with, “Would you just stop and think a minute!” and saves us one unpleasant parent-child interaction by inserting some humor into an otherwise scolding situation.
We could go on and on, because so many children’s books have a silly component to them, for an obvious reason: children love to be silly. If you can’t muster up the mental energy to engage in a staring contest or tell endless knock-knock jokes with your kids, maybe try reading a silly book together. It just might get you back on the fun parent track.
Happy reading!
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