Here are 69 books that The Great Escape fans have personally recommended if you like
The Great Escape.
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Reading with your kid can be a delight, but it’s tough to find a book that both grown-up and child think is hysterical. I mean, I tried reading Catch-22 to my three-year-old, but for some reason the incisive social commentary just didn’t resonate with her. My kids and I both let out genuine chuckles and guffaws while reading all of these books—an experience that I treasured. These books are all giggly, snickery proof that you don’t have to dumb things down to appeal to a wide age range—a goal that I aim for myself in the children’s books and TV shows that I write.
This is the book that made my kids’ heads explode (not literally—this book is perfectly safe (as far as I know)) as it helped them discover the idea of parody: taking something familiar and twisting it in a funny, unexpected way.
We rolled and lol’ed together as we read Jon’s wild, hysterical takes on old fairy tales. The non-twist twist ending to his take on the ugly duckling story is still a running joke in our family. Jon’s The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs and The Real Dada Mother Goose are also great for the same reason.
The entire book, with its unconventional page arrangement and eclectic, frenetic mix of text and pictures, is a spoof on the art of book design and the art of the fairy tale. The individual tales, such as The Really Ugly Duckling and Little Red Running Shorts, can be extracted for telling aloud, with great success. Another masterpiece from the team that created The True Story of the Three Little Pigs! -Horn Book
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
Reading with your kid can be a delight, but it’s tough to find a book that both grown-up and child think is hysterical. I mean, I tried reading Catch-22 to my three-year-old, but for some reason the incisive social commentary just didn’t resonate with her. My kids and I both let out genuine chuckles and guffaws while reading all of these books—an experience that I treasured. These books are all giggly, snickery proof that you don’t have to dumb things down to appeal to a wide age range—a goal that I aim for myself in the children’s books and TV shows that I write.
I have vivid memories of my voice getting louder and more hysterical, and my kids literally jumping up and down on their futon bed, laughing and clapping with delight, as I would read through the exciting ending of each of these charming, hilarious adventures about an adorable buttered-toast-loving pig and the group of humorous, sharply-drawn characters around her.
No gimmicks, no space aliens or magic amulets or evil supervillains, just great, well-paced, laugh-out-loud stories in which everyone always gets their perfect comeuppance. In terms of series with great, funny short stories, we also love Ivy and Bean and the Frog and Toad series.
The first adventure of this NEW YORK TIMES best-selling porcine wonder is now available as an e-book. (Ages 6 - 8)
To Mr. and Mrs. Watson, Mercy is not just a pig – she's a porcine wonder. And to the portly and good-natured Mercy, the Watsons are an excellent source of buttered toast, not to mention that buttery-toasty feeling she gets when she snuggles into bed with them. This is not, however, so good for the Watsons' bed. BOOM! CRACK! As the bed and its occupants slowly sink through the floor, Mercy escapes in a flash – "to alert the…
Reading with your kid can be a delight, but it’s tough to find a book that both grown-up and child think is hysterical. I mean, I tried reading Catch-22 to my three-year-old, but for some reason the incisive social commentary just didn’t resonate with her. My kids and I both let out genuine chuckles and guffaws while reading all of these books—an experience that I treasured. These books are all giggly, snickery proof that you don’t have to dumb things down to appeal to a wide age range—a goal that I aim for myself in the children’s books and TV shows that I write.
Oh, wow, this book is like a giant playground for the English language.
Every page is overloaded with jokes that literally go on forever, stories that end up right back where they started, puns and illusions, and poetic pretzel-knots, all illustrated with wild line-drawings and hippie-trippy 1960s colors.
I spent hours getting lost in this book as a child, and my kids loved it just as much as we giggled at the pages together.
A New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book of the Year.
In Arm in Arm, Remy Charlip, the great children’s book author and illustrator, is at his most playful, his zaniest, funniest, and cleverest. He rewrites the rules of riddles, tongue twisters, puns, and performance-based play, or rather, throws all rules out the window. Some pages require turning the book completely around, 360 degrees. A magnifying glass may also be useful. It is a book for kids of all ages.
Coyote weather is the feral, hungry season, drought-stricken, and ready to catch fire. It’s 1967, and the American culture is violently remaking itself while the country is forcibly sending its young men to fight in a deeply unpopular war.
Jerry has stubbornly made no plans for the future because he…
Reading with your kid can be a delight, but it’s tough to find a book that both grown-up and child think is hysterical. I mean, I tried reading Catch-22 to my three-year-old, but for some reason the incisive social commentary just didn’t resonate with her. My kids and I both let out genuine chuckles and guffaws while reading all of these books—an experience that I treasured. These books are all giggly, snickery proof that you don’t have to dumb things down to appeal to a wide age range—a goal that I aim for myself in the children’s books and TV shows that I write.
This book (along with the entire Haggis-on-Whey series) is one of the most remarkably twisted works of literature I know of.
On first glance, it seems to be a dry, conventional grade-school picture book about, yes, giraffes. And yet, as one reads through its content, at some point one will be struck by the realization: none of this is true!
Did giraffes really first come to Earth on a conveyor belt from Neptune? Are the legs of giraffes actually “filled with various types of fruit juice”? No! As far as I’m aware!
I waited until my kids could read on their own before giving them this book. In each case they spent a while reading through it with confused expressions, unable to reconcile the seemingly authoritative text with plain common sense…until they realized that the entire book is one giant prank and burst out laughing.
For many years the scientific and educational communities have wondered and worried about the possibility that semi-sane scholar-pretenders would find the means to publish a series of reference books aimed at children but filled with ludicrous misinformation. These books would be distributed through respectable channels and would inevitably find their ways into the hands and households of well-meaning families, who would go to them for facts but instead find bizarre untruths. The books would look normal enough, but would read as if written by people who have eaten too many lead-based paint chips. Giraffes? Giraffes! is the first in a…
Not so long ago, I got paid to roam Florida and send back quirky dispatches to waiting newspaper editors. I’m fourth-generation, and like many Floridians, I have a love-hate relationship with my home state. I love the exotic beauty, the tumultuous weather, and the “end-of-the-road” mentality of the Sunshine State, but I hate the sprawl, the traffic and the “everything’s for-sale” greed that’s turning this once-pristine place into a steaming suburban parking lot. I enjoy books that capture the beauty, the strangeness, and the quirky characters who still haunt this pistol-shaped peninsula.
Russell conjures a Florida where only a gauzy curtain separates vivid reality from a surreal and magical world. Present and past shift and blur.
I liked this book on first read, but struggled a bit with the magical elements of the story. When I reread it late last year, I fell completely under its spell. I can’t resist a story about a shabby Florida theme park, a menagerie of hungry alligators and an engaging 13-year-old who sets out on a journey through the swamp to save her siblings.
New York Times Bestseller | Pulitzer Prize Finalist
"Ms. Russell is one in a million. . . . A suspensfuly, deeply haunted book."--The New York Times
Thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree has lived her entire life at Swamplandia!, her family’s island home and gator-wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades. But when illness fells Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, the family is plunged into chaos; her father withdraws, her sister falls in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, defects to a rival park called The World of Darkness.
I live in a small town in rural Maine. My land has a farm pond, big pine trees, fields, and a crabapple orchard that blooms every spring. The air smells wonderful, and the night sky is big and mysterious. It is also less than five miles from the biggest commercial landfill in Maine, owned by the largest waste management company in the world. This landfill takes garbage not only from Maine but from many other states. In 1989, it was the site of a catastrophic landfill collapse. This has made me appreciate books that address the complexities of environmental activism and that remind me how we are all living on this same fragile planet.
I love a book that makes me laugh out loud, and this book did that many times!
Despite the serious underlying topic of eco preservation, this story is truly funny, with so many unexpected twists. There's not just alligators, burrowing owls, and poisonous snakes!
The main character, Roy Eberhardt, is the kind of person anyone would be lucky to have as a friend. And Beatrice and her step-brother are also both characters I cheered for.
6
authors picked
Hoot
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
12,
13,
14, and
15.
What is this book about?
This Newbery Honor winner and #1 New York Times bestseller is a beloved modern classic. Hoot features a new kid and his new bully, alligators, some burrowing owls, a renegade eco-avenger, and several extremely poisonous snakes.
Everybody loves Mother Paula's pancakes. Everybody, that is, except the colony of cute but endangered owls that live on the building site of the new restaurant. Can the awkward new kid and his feral friend prank the pancake people out of town? Or is the owls' fate cemented in pancake batter?
Welcome to Carl Hiaasen's Florida—where the creatures are wild and the people are…
Homeless following the death of his adoptive parents in a car crash and the subsequent loss of their farm tenancy, Seb decides to enrol as a residential student at the Asklepios Foundation, a College of Natural Medicine, boasting a sanctuary modelled on an ancient Greek healing temple. Spending a night…
To be a successful sales exec, required my being an observant student of human nature. The same skill applied to my becoming a successful author. I discovered the most unforgettable people I encountered throughout my career were a lot like the zany oddballs my favorite authors created and the perfect models to base my cast of characters on.
As a woman who was raised to have a moral compass, I am outraged whenever someone in authority abuses their power and gets away with it.
While I don’t condone revenge, nonetheless, I have to admit I cheered when lewd, lecherous, law-bending Florida Judge Robert “Maximum Bob” Gibbs finally gets his comeuppance and is judged guilty by a grudge-bearing malefactor and sentenced to death-by alligator, a unique means of execution, to say the least.
Ingenious, more than slightly off-kilter Elmore Leonard is the undisputed king of criminal mayhem. His wacky, raucous Maximum Bob is a delightfully dark humorous tale chocked full of zany characters; a group of magnificent miscreants Mr. Leonard created, knowing his readers would love to hate.
The New York Times bestselling author of Be Cool and Get Shorty
When someone delivers an alligator to Judge Bob Gibbs' porch, there's no shortage of suspects - hard-sentencing, womanising redneck 'Maximum Bob' is pretty much the most unpopular man in Florida.
Throw into the mix the Crowe clan - about as primitive and aggressive as any alligator - a doped-up doctor on early release with a tag, quick-witted probation officer Kathy Baker, a mermaid and a long-dead slave girl called Wanda, and things get a tad complicated. And inevitably, they don't work out the way you might expect...
I’m a full-time author and illustrator, and a recovering second grade teacher. I visit with tens of thousands of kids at schools every year and love sharing funny books with them. I’ve written and illustrated over 30 published books and know that kids appreciate subtle humor as well as in-your-face hilarity. I love writing stories that will make readers laugh and think. But mostly laugh.
Another brilliant gem of a book, Snappsy the Alligator is just trying to go about his day, but the annoying narrator of the book insists that he behave in certain ways. This book cleverly considers what the role of character is in a book and how the characters function in their story. Adults will appreciate the sophistication of the concept while younger readers will laugh hysterically at Snappsy’s attempts to be himself despite what the narrator thinks he should do.
Is he prowling for defenseless birds and soft, fuzzy bunnies? ls Snappsy a big, mean alligator who's obsessed with snack foods that start with the letter P? It's no wonder Snappsy won't invite the narrator to his party! Snappsy the Alligator (Did Not Ask to Be in This Book) is an irreverent look at storytelling, friendship, and creative differences from a pair of rising stars in the picture book world.
In addition to being a writer, I’m also a wildlife researcher and therefore spend a lot of time in wild, remote areas. Using a variety of methods including bioacoustic studies, I undertake wildlife surveys to determine what species are present on lands that have been set aside for conservation. I ensure there are no signs of poaching and devise of ways to improve habitat. I have surveyed for the presence of grizzlies, wolves, spotted owls, wolverines, jaguars, endangered bats, and more. These remote settings inspired me to write my current thriller series about a wildlife biologist who encounters dangerous situations while working to protect endangered species.
Robert McCammon is one of our finest contemporary writers. He truly has the gift of making me feel like I’m in the settings of his books, as if I’ve experienced the tribulations and triumphs of his characters firsthand. River of Souls is no exception. It transported me back in time to the swamps of the Carolinas in 1703, where alligators and snakes prowled the dark waters. The main character, Matthew Corbett, is tasked with journeying up the Solstice River in search of an accused murderer. He encounters strange settlements steeped in mysticism. Tales of a mythical beast hunting humans in the fetid landscape add to the terror. But despite these challenges, Corbett, a smart, dynamic, honor-bound character, will stop at nothing to see justice done.
“Macabre surprises abound” in this historical thriller by a New York Times–bestselling author, centered on the search for an escaped slave accused of murder (Publishers Weekly).
Accompanied by his new friend Magnus Muldoon, professional problem solver Matthew Corbett is in the Carolina colony, where three enslaved people have managed to flee their captors—one of them accused of killing the daughter of a plantation owner. Their quest to close the case will take Matthew and Magnus to the place known as “the River of Souls” as they encounter alligators and Native American warriors—and a terrifying being known as the Soul…
Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS
by
Amy Carney,
When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…
As a Latina living in the US, I encounter stereotypes about me and my culture. I am sure I have my own blind spots around other cultures and people. So, I like stories that break traditional tropes. Initially, fairytales were dark and used as moral teaching tools full of warnings and fear. I prefer retellings that spread joy and challenge assumptions. Lastly, I love to discover new—real or imaginary—places through the illustrations and the artist’s point of view, especially if it influences the twist.
I enjoyed how the characters in this story did not want to be confined to stereotypes, preferring to explore beyond their gender and princely station. They want to explore all their interests, from sewing to pulley building, in their own unique way. I found it hilarious that the “problem” to fix consisted of alligators out of their moat. The illustrations are super fun, with alligators hiding in the silliest places.
The castle is crawling with wayward alligators, and the clueless king doesn't know how to fix it. Lila, Margaret, and Harriet have lots of ideas, but their father won't listen! According to him, the Princesses should be focusing on proper pursuits like drawing, jewelry, and music. When the three girls start falling asleep during the day, the King sends the Prince to investigate .
What he discovers is that the three princesses are gathering at night to use their knowledge of the six simple machines to invent an ingenious alligator removal contraption in their secret workshop.
