A Barrel of Laughs A Vale of Tears by Jules Feiffer

This is on my nine year old's bedside table at the moment. He is taking his time with it, but when I ask (I ask my kids about their books WAY too much) if he has grown bored with it he tells me (insulted tone) "No! I really like it!"

It's got pretty big font and lots of illustrations so is a book that may well be a gateway for Wimpy Kid addicts to books with only text. (I love Wimpy Kid books but do think that its easy to get stuck at that reading level - the same applies to graphic novels in my house. They are fantastic but so often now I see my kids rereading them rather than tackling something slightly more taxing but great too. I suppose I was no different last week when I kept putting down A Tale of Two Cities to read about Brad and Angelina's wedding in Hello magazine.)

Anyway, look at these feet sticking out of the whales mouth..

And King Whatchamacallit..

So, so far, two thumbs up from a nine year old. And as for me, I finished both the Dickens and the magazine. The latter had the most exciting last one hundred pages of any book I have ever read, and can you believe Brad is 50?

P.s. Its easy to get any of Dickens works cheap, but the cheaper the edition, usually the smaller the font. The edition above is a nice size, perfectly readable for those of us over forty.