Are anyone else’s kids obsessed with telling knock-knock jokes that make absolutely no sense at all?
Here’s one I overheard recently:
Charlotte: “Knock Knock.”
Eloise: “Who’s there?”
Charlotte: “Eyeball.”
Eloise: “Eyeball who?”
Charlotte: “Eyeball on your face!”
(Both girls laugh hysterically.)
My girls needed better material to work with. But what makes a knock-knock joke difficult for children is the joke’s reliance on homophones (groups of words that have the same pronunciation but different meanings; ie: “I scream” and “ice cream.”) So, I can tell the girls a perfectly good knock-knock joke but the humor is lost on them because they miss the duality of the words. As an example:
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Mikey.
Mikey who?
Mikey won’t fit in the keyhole.
They stumble making the transition from “Mikey” to “my key,” and I have to pantomime a failed attempt at unlocking a door with a key.
The solution to teaching my kids good knock-knock humor? ILLUSTRATED knock-knock jokes! And it doesn’t get much better than Dial Books’ compilation of jokes, illustrated by some of the greatest picture book illustrators alive today.
The 14 artists who contributed to “Knock, Knock!” include the geniuses behind “Strega Nona,” “The Dot,” “Big Red Lollipop,” “Zen Shorts,” “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” “Imogen’s Antlers” and “A Ball for Daisy.
Each right-hand page of the book is the illustrated set-up for a knock-knock joke. Take Saxton Freymann’s classic, for example:
You turn the page, and the punchline is revealed:
The visual helps children understand the play on words more quickly and also helps them put the joke to memory — all the better to entertain their family and friends.
My girls’ favorite, which they’ve repeated with some success, comes from illustrator Laurie Keller:
As a side note, Iowa appears to have a place in knock-knock-joke history. Wikipedia cites the Rolfe Arrow of Rolfe, Iowa, as one of the very first places a knock-knock joke (in the form we know it today) appeared in print in the United States. It took some digging (Wikipedia references an incorrect date and page) but I eventually tracked down the original humor column (“HeeHaw News”) in the Arrow’s online archives.
The Pittsburg Post-Gazette had earlier reported in their Aug. 9, 1936, edition that knock-knock jokes had become a popular parlor game that year.
Thank goodness knock-knock humor has improved a bit over the past 75 years. I got a genuine laugh or two from this mostly-kid-friendly list at BuzzFeed.
What are your favorite knock-knock jokes?
Going on a Book Hunt 