The Silly Book [Hardcover]

Stoo Hample (Author, Illustrator)

Book Description

Grade Level: K and up

Stoo Hample's 1961 classic elicits a fresh round of giggles with this irresistible edition featuring new art from the author-illustrator — and the same wonderful retro feel.

I am silly,
You are silly,
All of us are silly,
Willy.

And everything in THE SILLY BOOK is the silly-willy-nilliest! There are songy sills (oops!) — silly songs, silly stories, silly poems, silly secrets, silly things to do, a silly good-night, and even silly nothings. Anyone who reads this book will laugh like anything or else turn into a bathtub. First published more than forty years ago — when it became an uproariously silly success — THE SILLY BOOK has returned to cause a new generation of children to giggle like gigglecopters (giggle giggle giggle), roll on the floor (roll roll roll), and cheer, "Boodleheimer, Boodleheimer" (CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!).

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Stoo Hample is the da Vinci of Daft, the Socrates of Screwy, and the Gershwin of Goofy. His book is mordant, scintillating, pungent, and deeply profound, but it's just a bit too silly for me." — Norton Juster, author of THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH — Norton Juster

"Stoo Hample's THE SILLY BOOK is more than forty years old and just as silly as ever. Me, too. Which is why I still love it. So do my grandchildren." — Mary Rodgers, author of FREAKY FRIDAY — Mary Rodgers

"THE SILLY BOOK is back again. It's the epitome of Stoo Hample himself. His crazy sense of humor and laughter — his unique frolic with the sound and fun in words — is like having Stoo himself in the room making us laugh." — Charlotte Zolotow, publisher emerita and children's book author — Charlotte Zolotow

"THE SILLY BOOK is — ha ha — so silly — ha ha — that I have trouble — ha ha — thinking about it while writing this — ha ha ha ha — blurb. I mean, have you noticed that the first two — ha ha — letters in Hample are Ha? I mean — ha ha — isn't that — ? It's so — ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Forgive me." — Jules Feiffer — Jules Feiffer

About the Author

Stoo Hample is the author and illustrator of many books for children, including MY MOM'S THE BEST MOM, YOU STINK! I LOVE YOU, and the international bestseller CHILDREN'S LETTERS TO GOD. THE SILLY BOOK, Stoo Hample's first book, was originally edited by the legendary children's book editor Ursula Nordstrom. The book became a colossal hit, and its popularity led to THE SILLY RECORD, a Boodleheimer doll, and other silly merchandise. This is a book for those who, like the author, believe in silliness. "Life," he maintains, "is essentially silly, or why would there be war, disease, and dandruff?"

Product Details

• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Candlewick; Reprint edition (August 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0763622567
• ISBN-13: 978-0763622565
• Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 0.3 x 10.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #914,783 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stuart ("Stoo") Hample, chronic self-doubter, writer, 5th to 6th-rate cartoonist, citizen, husband, father, fantasist, and self-styled "Multi-media Failure," has written, edited (and sometimes illustrated) more than 2 dozen books, including the international best-seller "Children's Letters To God" (1,293,000 copies in print). With two songwriters, he adapted "Children's Letters" into a small musical that had a six-month's run off-Broadway and is now touring from sea to shining sea around this great nation, beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, and purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain (See www.childrensletterstogod.com).

A produced playwright, Stoo also wrote the books for two Broadway musicals, which he calls "My hit musicals; if you mention them I'll hit you." Back in the early days of television (remember flickering black & white images, Kukla, Fran & Ollie, Jon Gnagy?) he hosted two shows at WBEN-TV in Buffalo, N.Y. Since then he has written TV comedy for the sitcom "Kate & Allie" and sketches for "George Burns Comedy Week" and "Jackie Gleason's American Scene Magazine." For PBS he created a 90-minute special, "The Great Radio Comedians." Stoo performed on the CBS TV children's show "Captain Kangaroo" as "Mister Artist," sketching cartoons to music, and has been a guest on "The Tonight Show", "Who Do You Trust?," "Oprah," and enough local TV and radio shows to give an entire nation gas.

To keep his unfocussed career sufficiently disparate, for some years he performed as a musical cartoonist at children's and pops concerts with symphony orchestras in the United States and Canada (see Stoo Hample page on Wikipedia). In the newspaper comics field he was co-creator with Woody Allen of a nationally syndicated comic strip, INSIDE WOODY ALLEN, based on the comedian's persona. A collection of some 250 strips appears in his new book DREAD & SUPERFICIALITY (Abrams), with a foreword by Buckminster Fuller, and an introduction by Hample telling how the strip came to be, and what it was like working with Woody Allen.

As an extension of his 2004 book, "Happy Cat Day: A Manifesto For An Official Cat Holiday," he created a monthly humor page that ran in CAT FANCY Magazine in 2005 to 2006, titled TIGER'S TALES, hosted by Tiger, the cartoon cat from Happy Cat Day.(see www.happycatday.org)

Zack Hample, his youngest son, is the author of two baseball books, "How To Snag Major League Baseballs: 100 Tested Tips That Really Work," in which he reveals some of the secrets that account for his phenomenal collection of over 4,000 baseballs (and counting)acquired by attending scores of ballgames in virtually every major league stadium - and WATCHING BASEBALL BETTER, the 8th best-selling sports book of 2008.(See www.zackhample.com).

Naomi Hample, Stoo's wife, is a partner in the renowned antiquarian shop in Manhattan, Argosy Book Store, founded in 1925 by her father, the late Louis Cohen. So while her husband and son write books, Naomi sells them, though hers are essentially rare and out-of-print and are merely part of the store's extensive stock which includes first editions, antique maps and prints, American paintings, and autographs. Security cameras have been placed throughout the building to monitor Stoo's movements by way of precluding his predilection for pocketing interesting items that catch his eye (See www.argosybooks.com). But he claims he amassed his large collection of cartoon art on his own.

Stoo's most recent picture books for children are the minor classic "The Silly Book," "I Will Kiss You Lots & Lots & Lots," and Stoo Hample's Book of Bad Manners.

Among Stoo's heroes (besides E.B. White, J.S. Bach, and Louis Armstrong) is the mid-20th Century humorist and author Fred Allen, radio's lone satirical wit, who fashioned, among other bon mots, these oft-quoted lines: "All the sincerity in Hollywood you can stuff into a flea's navel and still have room left over to conceal eight caraway seeds and an agent's heart" and "The world is a grindstone and life is your nose."(Cf Hample's book "All the Sincerity in Hollywood). He has just finished a play based on Allen, also titled "all the sincerity in hollywood" - yes in lower case because Allen wrote of his penchant for typing without capital letters, "i never learned to shift for myself." The play will feature former talk show host Dick Cavett, and the actress Didi Conn ("Frenchy" in the movie GREASE, and is to be directed by Austin Pendleton.

Hample's project-in-work is a satirical book about the United States Senate. He hopes his barbs will shame the hubristic senators into forsaking their egregiously-partisan obstructionist behavior to begin doing the people's work, as they were instructed by the Founding Fathers. But he has no illusions that his dream will come to fruition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 4 1/2 You Decide, March 17, 2005

By 

M. Allen Greenbaum (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Silly Book (Hardcover)

With such diverse opinions about this book, I thought I'd excerpt a few representative lines to give you an opportunity to preview it. Author/illustrator Stoo Hample originally put out "The Silly Book" in 1961; Candlewick published this edition in 2004. Not having seen the original, it's difficult to say how the two compare. In general, I think that nostalgia and memory make the booklover's heart grow fonder. However, Candlework's typical high production values (thick glossy paper, quality book materials) may actually work against the frivolity of the book; a cheaper 'zine (slang for low-tech magazine) format may have been more consonant with the throwaway silly humor. Here's an example:

SILLY STORY
I want to see my mommy a minute,
My mimmy a monnit. My mommy a minnit.
I want to see my mommy a minnit.
To sing her a little song,

To sing her a little.
To ling her a sittle,
To sit her a lingle long.
(I think my mommy will like it
Because it's a very short long.)

Nothing extraordinarily clever here--you're not gonna get something akin to the "Mozart effect" (in which parents play Mozart for their infants, hoping to stimulate their brains). No, when Hample titled this "The Silly Book." he meant it.

Here are some examples. Note how some of these riddles and word plays are now very formulaic for adults. The example immediately following is the kind of riddle that helped build one adult comedian's (G.C.) reputation.

SILLY QUESTION
If people get chicken pox, What do chickens get? SILLY ANSWER People pox.
ANOTHER SILLY QUESTION
If Mommy eats a Popsicle, What does Daddy eat? ANOTHER SILLY
ANSWER A Momsicle!

A few other examples follow:

SILLY MILLIE
"I am silly,/You are silly, All of us are silly,/ Willy./ All of us but cousin/ Millie./ She's upside down." (The poem is next to a picture of Millie, upside down, holding a flower labeled, "Tillie.")

SILLY RECIPE
"Cook three pieces of/spaghetti in a pan of/water for two years.
Add one teaspoonful/ of chocolate syrup/ and mix well.
Spread on bread/ and freeze.
Feed to teddy bear."

More than most books, this one depends on the interaction between the reader and the audience. When read with the right expression and tone to a receptive, language/sound fascinated boy or girl, this may be great fun and build future warm memories. Read cold off the page, many of the riddles, poems, and other prose come off as familiar word play. (By the way, the accompanying illustrations are generally simple, although sometimes drawn with clever dialogue or captions). Perhaps in 1961 this book was somewhat ahead of its time; the utter nonsense of these books may have been a refreshing change for some. Soupy Sales, a somewhat comparable visual and linguistic entertainer, was still a few years away from TV. Soupy, however, has a few more layers of meaning--there's a sly wink at the adults not seen here-this book centers around little kids only. "The Silly Book" will not ruin your audience's language; instead, it has the potential to increase their enjoyment of language, and, most importantly, to build lasting memories of reading and silly time. Given that context, I can recommend this book, especially for those adults who can add the enthusiasm that comes from finding an old favorite ready for a new generation.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's back! It's back!, August 24, 2004

By 

C. A. Dekker (Detroit, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Silly Book (Hardcover)

Woo hoo! What a classic. The Silly Book is good clean fun, and of course very silly. So... where's the old Silly Record? Or will it be reissued as a Silly CD?

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars first funny book, August 10, 2004

By 

Douglas Stone (Cambridge, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Silly Book (Hardcover)

I read this book as a kid and have been looking for it ever since, so I'm delighted it's back! As I look back on it, I realize it had a huge impact on shaping my sense of humor. Stoo was a friend of my dad's and he came to our house a couple times when I was a kid, and I remember him as being warm and funny.