Peculiar picks are a selection of odd, funny, interesting, curious, moving, irreverent, and otherwise wonderfully awesome, but perhaps not well known, reads. Picture books for younger readers and their grown-ups, handpicked by the Library's Youth Services Manager, Joshua Carlson.

Many of the books in this column are ones that my wife and I have read with our daughter. Our experiences of trying to find books to keep up with her insatiable love of books, while also keeping us interested in reading them, lead to a lot of the choices in this column. The Narwhal and Jellyfish books by Ben Clanton were one of the most successful I found to engage both my four-year-old daughter and myself. She and I laughed out loud repeatedly as we read each of the graphic novels in this series, and again as we re-read them, and re-re-read them. They are silly, goofy, at times completely nonsensical, funny, and irreverent, but also appropriate and accessible for a child as young as four.

Featuring a plethora of kid-friendly puns and jokes, superheroic waffles fighting giant evil pickles, narwhals with mustaches in disguise, facts about marine life, as well as casual looks at important themes such as acceptance, jealousy and friendship, this series is joyfully fun to read. In fact, I think I will go check them out again right now!