Look... Look Again!

New Yorker cartoonist O’Brien toys with perception and subverts expectations in 30 brief and clever stories—revolving around a farmer, chef, group of woodsmen, knight, doorman, and clown—that unfold in two to six panels each. Some stories are wordless (in the first, a cow jumps over the moon, after which a dog leaps up, grabs the moon like a Frisbee, and delivers it to a farmer), and when text is involved, it’s fair game, too: after a girl asks a clown for a “balloon hat,” he uses her speech bubble to do just that. O’Brien has great fun playing with puns and cartooning conventions, and readers will be delighted by the results. Ages 8–up. (Oct.)