If You Laugh, I'm Starting This Book Over by Chris Harris

Hey, Story Seekers!

I need you to be serious.

Very serious.

No laughing. No giggling. No snorting. None of that weird little squeak where you claim you weren't laughing even though everybody in the room heard exactly what happened.

Because today we're exploring If You Laugh, I'm Starting This Book Over, written by Chris Harris and illustrated by Serge Bloch.

The rule is printed on the front.

Laugh, and we go back to page one.

That's either a terrible way to finish a book or a brilliant way to keep a child glued to one. Possibly both, and I've got some genuinely strange evidence about which.

Readit has been informed of the no-laughing rule.

"I wasn't listening."

Excellent. Strong start.

Book Breakdown

There's a hamburger on the cover holding up one finger, asking for quiet.

Teachers report that kids see him and immediately want this book. Hold that thought, because it comes back.

There isn't a story here, and you should know that going in.

Instead there's a game between the person holding the book and the kid listening to it. The narrator has something very big and very important to tell you. One condition: you cannot laugh. If you laugh, we start over.

Then the book spends forty pages trying to make you laugh.

Ridiculous names. Nonsense instructions. Goofy pictures sneaking in from the side while the narrator gets more and more wound up about the possibility that somebody might crack.

Serge Bloch's art is loose, collage-flavored and deliberately silly, and it's working the other side of the street from the text. The words come at you from one direction and the pictures ambush you from another.

One reader made an observation I liked: she was surprised to learn there was a separate illustrator at all, because the pictures fit the words so tightly.

The whole apparatus has one job.

Break the kid.

And the grown-up reading it is standing directly in the crossfire.

For teachers and librarians: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2022. Forty pages, ages 4 to 8. Kirkus pegs it slightly tighter at 4 to 7.

No reading levels here. I looked for Lexile, ATOS, Guided Reading and an AR quiz and found nothing reliable for this title, so I'm not printing a number I can't stand behind.

Jungle Jimmy's Journal

Here's the thing that explains this book, and the publisher doesn't put it on the cover.

Chris Harris is a television comedy writer. He was an executive producer on How I Met Your Mother and wrote for The Late Show with David Letterman.

Once you know that, the book makes complete sense.

This isn't constructed like a picture book. It's constructed like a bit.

A bit has a premise, escalation, a performer holding the room, and a payoff that depends entirely on delivery. That's exactly what's on these pages. The comedy isn't in the sentences. It's in the space between the person reading and the kid being read to.

Which is why this is a performance book, and I mean that as the single most useful thing I can tell you.

You can read the words flat. The book will not save you.

The whole premise requires you to desperately want the child not to laugh, which of course means you desperately want them to laugh. That's a wonderful position for a performer. The harder you fight to hold the line, the funnier it is when you lose it.

I've spent thirty years doing a version of this in school gyms. Telling a room of kids they absolutely must not do something is the oldest reliable trick there is.

Now the honest part, and it's the reason I spent longer on this review than usual.

I was fully prepared to write "give this to somebody who can perform and it sings." Then I found a teacher who had already run that experiment.

Her students beg for the hamburger book every time they see the cover. And then, in her words, "it's crickets every time I read it, no matter how I try to juice my performance."

That's a person doing exactly what I'd have recommended, reporting that it didn't work.

So I can't tell you performance is a guarantee. It's a requirement, which is a different thing.

There's a second practical problem. This book runs long for the trick it's playing, and if you actually honor the title every time somebody laughs, you are signing up for a while.

One parent picked it for bedtime and reported it took almost an hour, because the kids kept laughing and they kept restarting.

She also said: "Worth it!"

So. Delightful at two in the afternoon.

A tactical error at 8:17 at night.

Readit's Review

Wait. If I laugh, we start over?

"Yes."

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Readit.

"What?"

Now we start over.

"Okay."

You're doing this on purpose.

"No."

You are smiling.

"I have a happy face."

Fine. No more laughing. Eyes front. Serious worm.

"There's a hamburger."

I know there's a hamburger.

"He has legs."

Readit.

"A hamburger should not have legs. What is he walking toward. Is it a grill. Does he know."

That's enough.

"Can we start over?"

NO.

What Others Think

This is the most interesting split we've run into, and it's worth laying out properly.

The read-aloud video of this book by KidTime StoryTime has 16 million views and 46,000 likes. The channel itself has 1.21 million subscribers, which means this one video pulled roughly thirteen times the entire channel's subscriber count.

By that measure it's a phenomenon.

Now the book. Goodreads has it at 3.34 out of 5 from 350 ratings, and the shape underneath that is unusual: only 41 percent gave it four or five stars, and 21 percent gave it one or two. That's the most divided book we've reviewed.

Sixteen million views and a 3.34.

The obvious explanation is adults versus kids, and that's what I assumed. It's not that simple, and the reviews are fascinating about it.

Emily Carter-Dunn gives you the clean version: "My daughter finds it hilarious. I find it painfully unfunny."

But then Elise reports the exact reverse: "I thought this book was hilarious, but my ten year old thought it was lame."

And Elise puts her finger on what I now think is the real variable: "the sweet spot for this book with kids would be 4 to 6 years old."

That tracks with everything else. The big wins all involve little kids. Jackie Pilling's son "laughed so hard reading this," and note the direction there, the boy was reading it to her. Phyllis had her granddaughters in stitches on a road trip, the seven-year-old reading it to the eight-year-old doing voices, then swapping and going again.

Kids performing it at each other is where this book is happiest.

The criticism is blunt and it repeats. Clementine calls it "aggressively unfunny and so clearly influenced by fourth-wall-breaking books came before (and did it much better)." Melanie Hetrick quit at page twelve: "In twelve pages there was no story progression." James names the trap the title sets: "You set yourself up for failure when you promise in the title that this book will be hilarious."

Rose Rosetree raises the sharpest objection, and it's a craft one rather than a taste one. She found the instructions to the reader "pretty manipulative," adding that she doesn't much like being ordered around or told where to look. She still gave it three stars for originality.

That's a fair hit. The book does boss you. Whether that reads as playful or pushy is going to depend on the kid.

On the positive side, librarian Molly Cluff found "genuinely funny moments" and admits which page got her, the one with the feathers with smiley faces. Liz recommends it as a read-aloud for kindergarten and up. Bil Borders: "I laughed. And started over once or twice only because I wanted to."

And several readers, including a teacher, point out the thing I'd want a parent to hear. One notes she knows too many kids who avoid reading because it's boring, and that boring is not available anywhere in these pages.

So how do I square 16 million with 3.34?

I don't think the video proves the book is great. I think the video proves the premise is great, and that a professional performer with a camera is a completely different delivery system than a tired parent on a Tuesday.

The concept is irresistible. The execution is a coin flip.

Belly Laugh Scale

3 out of 5: Solid Chuckles

I went back and forth on this one more than any book we've covered, and I landed lower than I expected to.

The premise deserves a five. Telling a child they must not laugh is a perfect engine, and the sixteen million people who watched somebody else try it agree with me.

But this scale measures whether the book makes kids laugh, and the evidence is genuinely split. One in five raters gave it one or two stars. A teacher performing it hard gets silence. A ten-year-old calls it lame.

What I can say with confidence is narrower, and it's the useful version: with a four to six-year-old and an adult willing to ham it up, this thing is a rocket. Outside those conditions it gets unreliable fast.

A book that works brilliantly in a narrow band and dies outside it is a three, not a four. If I gave it the four I'd be scoring the premise rather than the book.

Three out of five. Solid Chuckles.

With a very large performance bonus available to those who claim it.

Final Explorer Verdict

Buy this if you have a four to six-year-old and you are willing to perform.

That's the whole recommendation, and I'd rather give you a narrow one that's true than a wide one that isn't.

If you're the parent who does voices, who will stop mid-sentence and glare suspiciously at a child, who can act genuinely wounded when somebody giggles, this book is a gift and you will get more out of it than the ratings suggest.

If you read bedtime stories flat because you're exhausted and it's been a long day, and no judgment at all, this one will not work and you'll wonder what everybody sees in it.

Two practical notes. Don't pick it for bedtime unless you've got an hour and a sense of humor about it. And with a big group, quietly retire the restart rule or you will spend the rest of your professional life on page one.

The best use I found in the research isn't an adult reading it to a kid at all. It's two kids reading it to each other, taking turns, competing to be funnier. If you've got siblings or a couple of cousins, hand it to them and leave the room.

One more thing worth knowing. Chris Harris's earlier book was illustrated by Lane Smith, who drew The Stinky Cheese Man, and readers here keep comparing this one to The Book With No Pictures. That's the neighborhood. If you love books that argue with the person holding them, you're in the right aisle, and honestly I'd start with those two.

There's a bridge to my own shelf that I don't have to force. Look! There Are No Dinos Inside Of This Book runs the same play from the opposite direction. Dangerous Dave insists there are no dinosaurs while the pictures show kids exactly how wrong he is. Both books hand the child the same delicious job: you know better than the grown-up holding the book, and you get to say so out loud.

And if your kid is the one who says books are boring, that shout-back structure is usually the way in. I put together fifteen books for reluctant readers here, sorted by the excuse you're currently hearing.

Readit?

"Yes?"

We made it to the end.

"Cool."

And you didn't laugh.

"Nope."

I'm genuinely impressed.

"The hamburger has legs."

...

We are not starting over.

Keep exploring, Story Seekers!

Jungle Jimmy & Readit