SMART FELLER FART SMELLER

From anagrams (Elvis Lives!, 2000) and palindromes (Palindromania!, 2002), Agee moves to a more rudimentary form of wordplay, pairing spoonerisms framed as questions and answers (“What did Rapunzel say to the filthy giant?” “You need to shake a tower”) with literal, simply drawn ink-and-wash visual interpretations. The author opens with a brief introduction to William Archibald Spooner, and closes with superfluous “translations” of each punch line. His humor in these 28 examples is sometimes crude (see title, which answers, “What did the cowboy say to the rocket scientist?”), and, as in Shel Silverstein’s Runny Babbit (2005), the joke definitely wears thin—but readers of the target mentality may be tempted to rake the tall and bun with it. (Nonfiction. 6-8)