Book Review: Jokes Puns and Riddles

Is this one a Fair Trade Book? Hard to say. Internet searches reveal some people using the name "David Allen Clark" who are still alive, some who are not. If you buy the book we'll write to the publisher to ask.

Title: Jokes Puns and Riddles

Author: David Allen Clark

Date: 1968

Publisher: Doubleday

ISBN: none

Length: 288 pages

Illustrations: black-and-white cartoons by Lionel Kalish

Quote: “Did you hear about the race between the…cabbage, the faucet, and the tomato?...The cabbage was ahead, the faucet was running, and the tomato was trying to ketchup.”

Why do you need to hoard a few issues of the local newspaper before your middle school student reads this book? Because these are the sort of clean, kind, wholesome jokes to which the traditional response is to throw things at the person telling them, but you don’t want to mess up the house. “What occurs once in every minute, twice in every moment, but never in a hundred thousand years? The letter M!” Paper wads are clearly indicated.

This is a bigger, thicker book than publishers usually try to market to joke-loving children these days, but most of the jokes should be accessible even to today’s middle school readers.

“What part of the car is the cause of most accidents?” “The nut that holds the wheel.”

“A cat has claws at the end of its paws, and a comma has a pause at the end of its clause.”

“What’s worse than raining cats and dogs? Hailing taxis.”

All families that like family-friendly jokes should have this book. To buy it here, send $5 per copy + $5 per package to either of the addresses at the bottom of the screen. At least two more books of the same size would fit into the same package.