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FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE BEST-SELLING WORDS ARE CATEGORICAL™ SERIES BRIAN P. CLEARY ADVENTURES IN HUM Illustrations by OR J. P. SANDY Step right up to THE LAUGH STAND and pick out the laugh of your choice. Humor is on sale and Brian P. Cleary is delivering! Perhaps you’re in th e market for a tie : Tom Salonwg if the lines of —something “These are my underpants,” Tom said briefly. Not for you? Then how ab out a Daffynition ? Cartoons: the music one hears while in an automobile. Chuckle your way through the stand’s cartoons and wacky headlines and you’ll come to the grams department—a full selection of pangrams, anagrams, and even word diagrams. And the best news of all is that THE LAUGH STAND comes with a guarantee—to make you laugh. REINFORCED BINDING ADVENTURES IN Brian P. Cleary Illustrations by J. P. Sandy j Millbrook Press • Minneapolis HUMOR To Mike and Ryan —B.P.C. To Joyce, Eric, and Michael —J.P.S. Text copyright © 2008 by Brian P. Cleary Illustrations copyright © 2008 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review. Millbrook Press A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc. 241 First Avenue North Minneapolis, MN 55401 U.S.A. Website address: www.lernerbooks.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cleary, Brian P., 1959– The laugh stand : adventures in humor / by Brian P. Cleary ; illustrated by J. P. Sandy. p. cm. ISBN 978–0–8225–7849–9 (lib. bdg. : alk. paper) 1. American wit and humor. 2. Play on words. I. Title. PN6165.C62 2008 817—dc22 2007021889 Manufactured in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 – DP – 13 12 11 10 09 08 eISBN-13: 978-0-7613-3983-0 TABLE OF CONTENTS Anagram Crackers • 4 Curl Up and Diagram • 8 Tom Swifties • 10 The Obfuscation Station • 14 Short Stuff • 16 Spell-Czech • 18 The Funny Papers • 20 Poetry by Numbers • 24 Poetry of Note • 26 Plurals of Wisdom • 30 Pots and Pangrams • 32 Daffynitions • 36 Use Your Headlines • 40 Answer Key • 44 Further Reading • 47 Websites • 48 AN A GR AM CRACKERS Anagrams take the letters in a word, phrase, or sentence and by rearranging them, create another word, phrase, or sentence. S A I N T S A T I N G E R M A N or can become S T A I N. becomes M A N G E R. All the words formed from colored blocks in the following sentences are anagrams of other words in the same sentence: PANS always SNAP my dad’s N A P S. 4 As R H E A ’ S preparing to S H E A R , she H E A R S the H A R E S as they S H A R E secrets. I’ll E A T what they A T E — T E A and toast. Mr. P O T S O P T S to leave his S P O T at the bus S T O P while he T O P S off his coffee. 5 The D A N G E R in the G R A N D E GARDEN RANGE D from high to low for the G A N D E R. E M I L ’S S M I L E is still there after walking through M I L E S of the S L I M E of L I M E S . 6 E L V I S sells V E I L S and L E V I ’ S and preaches against E V I L S to anyone who L I V E S close by. And check out this anagram sentence: WA S S H E T H E S T A R O N T H I S T O U R? T H E R A T H ASH ST EW I S N O T S O U R. 7 CURL UP AND DIAGRAM In this section, I have tried to include many different types of words in these short verses. My challenge was to write a rhyming piece that included at least one noun, verb, adjective, pronoun, preposition, and adverb—as well as pairs of words that are synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, and homophones. I even threw in a simile (a figure of speech comparing two unlike things, usually linked by the word “like” or “as”) just to show off. Try showing off a little yourself. I’ve only coded one example of each type of word. There are more examples of most of them, and I’ve used articles, conjunctions, and contractions as well. See how many words you can categorize. Watch for words such as “quickly” that have more than one category. You’ll find all the words identified in the answer key on page 44. WORDS Whether they’re chosen quite slowly or quickly, hastily scribbled or lettered quite slickly, they tell us the news that the gnus have new shoes. Without ‘em our language would sure be a snooze! 8