THE GIGGLE MAKER 3000

Meet Grandma Joy: seventy years young, apron pockets stuffed with glitter and pipe cleaners, and the proud inventor of the Sock-Matching Robot That Mismatches. When her town catches a mysterious case of Serious-itis-kids stop telling knock-knock jokes, neighbors forget how to pun, and even the pigeons start yawning-she decides enough is enough. With her grandkids (and one very quiet animal-impressionist sidekick), she dusts off an ancient family blueprint for the Giggle-Maker 3000, a gloriously ridiculous machine that promises to amplify the tiniest snicker into full-blown, can’t-breathe belly laughs.The catch? It runs on three impossible ingredients: a genuine hyena snort, a tickle stolen from the middle of a tornado, and a burp from a thoroughly surprised whale. What follows is a week of banana-peel wigs, feather-nadoes, off-key sea shanties, singing toupees, slip-and-slide workshop floors, and one spectacular foam explosion that covers the whole town. Along the way the machine malfunctions in the best possible ways... and the kids discover the secret the blueprints never mentioned.The real Giggle-Maker was never made of pipes and levers. It was the shared silliness, the worst joke told with total confidence, and the courage to look completely ridiculous together. Packed with slapstick, heart, and enough goofy inventions to keep 6- to 8-year-olds (and the grown-ups reading to them) giggling from start to finish, The Giggle-Maker 3000 is a joyful reminder that laughter is a superpower-and every kid already has the switch.