Some puns are cute and some are absolute groaners, but all the jokes in these books rely on everyday language and homonyms rather than Amelia Bedelia-style literal interpretations of figures of speech. Jokes make our brains work in order to reconcile competing meanings, pronunciations, or spellings: “How do we know the ocean is friendly? It waves!” ( Punny). Happy, diverse kids welcome readers from the cover; while inside, clean design is dominated by stock photos and colorful cartoon drawings. Knock-Knock Jokes is of particular note: clean jokes for kids tend to repeat from book to book, so any book with a few new ones is a find. VERDICT Great looking and plainspoken joke books for early readers.