WHO ORDERED THE JUMBO SHRIMP?

From Agee (Go Hang a Salami! I’m a Lasagna Hog!, 1992, etc.) comes this interpretation of the oxymoron, an expression that seems contradictory. Older children and adults will find mild amusement in this joke-book collection, where the black-and- white cartoons provide the punchline. Among some of the musty notions that might have been at home in the New Yorker’s pages a couple of decades ago are the “permanent temp,” an old woman at a manual typewriter with a date on the wall of January 18, 1932, and the “resident alien,” washing his spaceship out in front of his suburban home. Some of the others venture into the surreal, or at least into Far Side territory; “alone together” shows a man, a woman, a child, and a cat in separate cages, while “home office” contains five desks, each with a plaque respective for Mother, Father, Son, Daughter, and Spot (the dog). (Picture book. 10-12)