Books like Shrek! — picked by fans

The only book you need! Compiled over several short stories, you can pack just this one book with you on a trip and be set for your entire trip. It is so fun to have short stories as an option—you can read one if the baby is tired or five if the baby needs time to wind down before bedtime.

Crockett Johnson worked as a cartoonist for Collier’s before his strip Barnaby first appeared in newspapers in 1942. He illustrated a couple of children’s books in the 1940s, before writing and drawing his minimalist ode to the power of creativity, Harold and the Purple Crayon.

He’d do six more books about Harold, but for my money the best is the second one, in which Harold visits a castle, and has to do all sorts of creative problem solving to defeat a witch. The ending – in which Harold returns home and asks his mother to read him a story – is a cozy happily ever after.

This book is not about supply chain, but it is about dragons, and it definitely talks about a behind-the-scenes phenomenon that we see in the world. This is one of those lessons-wrapped-in-a-story books that I think are so effective… you don’t know you’re learning a universal truth about human nature until it jumps up cutely and breathes fire in your face.

In this case, the truth is that refusing to recognize the reality of an unpleasant situation will only make it worse. It’s better to name the dragon in the room and discuss it courageously instead of making blanket statements about why it doesn’t and can’t exist. At the end of the day, acknowledging our shared reality and talking about our struggles is something we can all get better at... because we, like dragons, just want to be seen.

A fact lost in their massive success in children’s books is that Stan and Jan Berenstain started as cartoonists.

In the 1940s and 1950s their work appeared in the likes of the Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, and McCall’s, and they had a series of best-selling “cartoon essay” books. Their famous bears debuted in 1962 as part of Beginner Books, a line created by Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel, Helen Palmer Geisel, and Phyllis Cerf.

With 1978’s The Spooky Old Tree, The Berenstains created the quintessential early reader, using repetition and predictability, prepositional phrases, rich visuals, and high drama to captivate their young audience (and their parents). “Do they dare? Yes. They dare.”

No one, and I do mean no one, can craft a sentence like Larry Doyle.

What Usagi Yojimbo is to a katana, Doyle is to the English language, building statements that manage to at once stretch the imagination but be immediately recognizable. Doyle will describe a feeling, an instant, a moment that is universal in words you’ve never seen strung together.

On top of that, this book is a hilarious romp in an alternate history with monsters and mad science, and it manages to pull off one of the most incredible narrative twists I’ve ever seen.

There is nothing more fun than a rag-tag group of kids living in a tree house and battling monsters, zombies, and whatever else bleeds into their dimension.

Max Brallier does an amazing job of tapping into a middle grader’s pituitary. What he squeezes out is a thrilling and hilarious roller-coaster of an adventure. Just writing this makes me want to take the ride all over again. And I didn’t even mention the art yet either.

Douglas Holgate draws monsters so cool, that they are often drool inducing. Seriously. Do a Google search if you don’t believe me.

This is a seriously funny book full of great dialogue. It’s also a great premise…the hero who makes a bet with his friend to sleep with said friend’s very cranky ex-girlfriend.

Min has just been recently dumped by a man she didn’t love, but she’s not in the mood to deal with any man’s ****. Cal is stupidly handsome, successful, and charming, but he needs to be brought down a peg or ten. This is opposites attract romance with lots of heart!

From the pen of Pulitzer Prize-winning Herman Wouk, this is an engrossing World War II naval drama centred on Willie Keith, a privileged young officer serving aboard the USS Caine.

I found myself unable to put the book down, reading long into the night. As the ship endures the erratic leadership of Captain Queeg, tensions rise, culminating in a controversial mutiny during a violent typhoon. The subsequent court-martial examines themes of duty, morality, and psychological strain under pressure.

Wouk’s richly detailed narrative explores the complexities of command and the fine line between loyalty and rebellion in the heat of conflict. His writing style makes it a real page-turner. Through Willie’s personal growth and shifting loyalties, the novel delivers a powerful meditation on honour, leadership, and the human cost of war. 

This book tells the story of a teenage girl with terminal cancer who befriends a hospital chaplain and an elderly woman during her last year of life. 

She asks the big questions of life and finds friendship and meaning during existential and physical struggle. You cannot help but fall in love with the characters and share their efforts to find self, meaning, and hope during great struggle.

I’ve selected this title as it’s one of the first Jeeves and Wooster books but, to be honest, you could choose any one; they’re all brilliant.

That goes for pretty much all of Wodehouse’s stories. I realise everyone knows these two characters from the various TV series produced over the years. But they may not have read the books. They should. It’s a great credit to the author that whichever actors portray this pair, and others such as Lord Emsworth of Blandings, the characters are instantly recognisable.

I think PG Wodehouse’s characterisation is superb. I admire his eye for details, not only in appearance but in mannerisms and speech. Wooster – the young gentleman – is wealthy, foppish, dapper, scatterbrained and idle. Jeeves – the gentleman’s gentleman – is someone who “from the collar upwards, stands alone.” That phrase alone tells the reader everything they need to know about the… show more.