Punished

Lubar, David. 2006. Punished. Plain City, OH: Darby Creek.

This is a short (93 pages) novel about a Logan, a young boy with a "punny" problem. The mysterious Professor Robert Wordsworth catches him running in the library, and declares that he should be "punished." It isn't until the next day that Logan realizes that he's been cursed with a steady and unceasing stream of involuntary puns!

His mom asks him to put the evening's dessert into the fridge, " 'Sure, I don't mind pudding it away.' Mom stared at me for a moment. 'We'll be eating in fifteen minutes,' she finally said. 'The spooner you lettuce eat, the better,' I told her."

The punning goes on with hilarious results until Professor Wordsworth offers him a way to break the curse. He must collect seven oxymorons, seven anagrams, and seven palindromes. The chapters are appropriately named, "Opposites Attract," "Scrambling for Answers," and "Either Way it's the Same." With a little help from his family and his best friend, Benedict, he fulfills his "sentence."

Guaranteed to make you groan (with delight), this book is punny for younger J readers.