Pickle who? Pickle me up – I fell outta my sandwich again! Muffin who? Muffin in here, can we go outside! Olive who? Olive you… but only if you’re into puns and bad decisions. There is a specific genre of joke that only works when you read it out loud, watch the kid groan, and then watch them tell the exact same joke at school the next day. Laugh Out Loud (or Just Sigh) with Dad is John Shoufler’s full-color, illustrated, three-section family joke book built for exactly that — bedtime, car rides, dinner table standoffs, and the long campaign of parental humor in which the goal is not actually to be funny but to be funny enough that your kid remembers it forever.
It is the kind of book that, used correctly, becomes a family artifact — dog-eared, marker-stained, repeatedly demanded at bedtime, and quoted back at you by your eleven-year-old at a moment when you genuinely thought they were too cool for it.
About Laugh Out Loud (or Just Sigh) with Dad
Laugh Out Loud (or Just Sigh) with Dad is organized into three sections built for three different audiences and three different reading occasions. Every joke is paired with original illustration that turns the page into a small visual scene — the pickle that fell out of its sandwich, the kids on bikes who can’t ketchup, the llama who’ll tell you later because they’re in the middle of something. The book runs deep into the high triple digits in joke count.
The three-section structure is deliberate: it lets the book grow with the reader. The Knock Knock section lands with the youngest set. The Punny Jokes section opens up the wordplay that gets harder to spot as kids’ language gets more sophisticated. The Redneck Oneliners section is the section parents read out loud and grandparents quote from memory.
Who This Book Is For
- Parents of kids roughly 4-12 who want a joke book that holds up to repeated reading and grows with the child
- Grandparents looking for the perfect dinner-table or porch-swing book
- Teachers and librarians stocking a shelf that gets pulled down constantly
- Anyone planning a long car trip with kids — the book is engineered for read-aloud
- Birthday-gift buyers who want something that works for the whole age range from kindergartener to middle-schooler
- Dads (and moms, and uncles, and aunts) building a personal arsenal for the long-running parental humor campaign
The Three Sections at a Glance
Section 1: Knock Knock Jokes
The opener and the longest section. The classic structure that every kid intuitively understands by age four: knock knock – who’s there – [name] – [name] who – [punchline that turns the name into a phrase]. Each joke is paired with a full illustration that turns it into a small scene the reader can sit with for a beat before delivering the punchline. A sampling from the section: pickles falling out of sandwiches, muffins begging to go outside, ketchup-related cycling emergencies, llamas who are too busy to talk, olives demanding kitchen help, Alfredo and Donut making appearances. The format makes the section endlessly repeatable — kids memorize their favorites within a week and start ambushing you with them.
Section 2: Punny Jokes
The middle section that opens up the wordplay genre. This is where the book starts hitting older readers and adults — the puns that require enough English fluency to catch the double meaning, but stay clean and family-appropriate. The Punny Jokes section is what you read out loud at the dinner table after the youngest kid has gone to bed and the eight-year-old is ready to feel smart about catching the wordplay. It’s also the section that sneaks up on parents who think they’re “above” pun humor and find themselves laughing despite themselves.
Section 3: Redneck Oneliners
The closing section and the longest reach. Short, punchy one-liners in the rural-American humor tradition — the genre Jeff Foxworthy and the Blue Collar Comedy crowd made famous. The section reads aloud beautifully, lands in the time it takes to deliver a single sentence, and works as the section grandparents will quote unprompted at family gatherings. It’s the section that gives the book its widest age range — kids enjoy the surprise of the punchlines, parents recognize the genre, and grandparents settle into it like a comfortable chair.
What Makes This Book Different
It’s illustrated, not just printed. Most kids’ joke books are walls of text. Laugh Out Loud (or Just Sigh) with Dad turns every joke into a visual scene. The pickle falling out of the sandwich isn’t just words — it’s a panicked cartoon pickle on its back next to a towering deli sandwich, exclamation marks and all. That visual layer is what makes kids return to the book on their own, which is the single best signal a joke book can give.
It grows with the reader. The three-section structure means a four-year-old can fixate on the Knock Knocks for a year before suddenly noticing the puns, and a ten-year-old can flip directly to the Redneck Oneliners and read them aloud at the table while the younger sibling demands a knock-knock. A single book covers a wide stretch of childhood.
It’s clean and family-safe. Every joke is appropriate for any age. No exceptions. The book can be handed to a grandparent, a teacher, a Sunday school class, or a road-trip backseat without the parent reading ahead.
It rewards reading aloud. The jokes are engineered for the spoken format — short setups, clear punchlines, the timing that makes the page-turn or the pause work. This is a book that performs.
It’s a coffee-table-meets-bedside book. The illustrations make it browsable; the joke count makes it long-lived; the three-section structure makes it re-readable. Few joke books last past a single weekend. This one lives on the shelf.
About the Author
John Shoufler writes across fiction, nonfiction, technology, business, parenting, and — in this book — the specific art form of the dad joke. A father whose comedic timing has been workshopped at countless family dinners, he holds a BS in Nuclear Engineering Technology from Excelsior College and an MBA from the University of Illinois, neither of which prepared him to deliver a punchline. The pickle did.
Where This Book Sits in the Catalog
If Laugh Out Loud (or Just Sigh) with Dad resonates, two companion volumes extend the conversation in different parenting directions. Bully-Proof Your Child is the serious parenting companion for the moments when the laughs aren’t enough. Raising Digital Athletes is the parent’s guide to one of the specific worlds modern kids are growing up inside.
Get the Book
Laugh Out Loud (or Just Sigh) with Dad by John Shoufler. Three sections — Knock Knock Jokes, Punny Jokes, Redneck Oneliners — fully illustrated. Available in paperback.
Explore more of John Shoufler’s catalog on his author page, or browse the full Shoufler family catalog for fiction, nonfiction, and everything in between.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who wrote Laugh Out Loud (or Just Sigh) with Dad?
John Shoufler — Shoufler family-catalog author. This is his family humor title, sitting alongside his parenting nonfiction.
What is Laugh Out Loud (or Just Sigh) with Dad about?
A fully illustrated family joke book in three sections: Knock Knock Jokes, Punny Jokes, and Redneck Oneliners. Built for read-aloud, car rides, and the dinner table.
Is the joke book appropriate for younger kids?
Yes — the jokes are clean and the illustrations carry the punchlines for early readers. Younger kids can enjoy the pictures while older kids and adults catch the wordplay.
How long is the joke book?
It’s a quick read for one sitting and a long re-read in shorter sittings — designed so a family can pull it off the shelf for five minutes and find something fresh.
Is it good for car rides and travel?
Yes — the three-section structure lets you cycle through formats, the jokes are short enough to read aloud one-handed, and the illustrations keep younger passengers engaged between jokes.