With simple text and cartoon artwork, Balloon Toons™ are the the perfect way to engage and encourage new readers. Award-winning and up-and-coming cartoonists lend their inimitable and illustrative talents to entertaining stories kids will enjoy again and again. Graphic designer Elise Gravel is an expert in Glurbs. What's a Glurb? A funny little monster who yells really loud, eats ten times his body weight daily, and loves unrolling toilet paper. Kids will discover everything it takes to keep a Glurb healthy and happy.

With simple text and cartoon artwork, Balloon Toons are the the perfect way to engage and encourage new readers. Award-winning and up-and-coming cartoonists lend their inimitable and illustrative talents to entertaining stories kids will enjoy again and again. Best-selling author/illustrator Ethan Long makes his Balloon Toons debut with the story of Rick & Rack, twofriends who embark on three hilarious (mis)adventures in the great outdoors.

With simple text and cartoon artwork, Balloon Toons are the the perfect way to engage and encourage new readers. Award-winning and up-and-coming cartoonists lend their inimitable and illustrative talents to entertaining stories kids will enjoy again and again.Looking like a cross between a slug and a sock puppet, alien Doctor Bugspit plies his trade. He blithely dispenses jars of “Fix-It-Up Syrup” (made from sock juice, dead flies, moldy meat, pickle juice and ear wax) and other nostrums to extraterrestrial patients complaining of maladies ranging from split brains (“You have two smaller brains,” the doctor diagnoses, “like a cow”) to an all-body outbreak of toes. Despite nap and lunch breaks (“my favorite sandwich: slug slime and glow-in-the-dark jelly”) it’s an exhausting routine but the good doctor is up to it—until, that is, the gooey results of a sneeze (“some yellow stuff is coming out of my nose!”) send him into panic-stricken calls for “a REAL doctor!” Presented in a loose assortment of graphic panels, page-sized or smaller, this Balloon Toons entry will exert a strong draw on budding graphic-novel fans as well as children fascinated by yucky stuff.

A young boy and his best buddy, Butterscotch, search for hidden treasure, save the city from an angry monster, and patrol a kingdom. Amazing adventures ensue as brave boy knight saves the day!

In Ryan Sias' Zoe and RobotLet's Pretend, a young girl tries to teach her robot how to pretend, but how do you use your imagination when you're a robot? Sias' vivid cartoons lend wit and warmth to a funny friendship.

Jamie has hiccups on the day of his school play! His best friend and co-star is determined to find a cure–no matter how silly, icky, or weird it might be! Will the show-HIC!-go on? Hiccups–everyone's had 'em, and nobody wants 'em. The familiar dilemma drives this comically exaggerated story of a boy-rabbit battling the inconvenience and embarrassment of a jumpy diaphragm. Hiccup! is an ideal choice for kids who are more attuned to sweeter brand of slapstick humor.

Dinosaurs, comics, and outer space—together at last! This new, two-books-in-one format of Blue Apple's acclaimed Balloon Toons series is sure to please kids, parents, and educators alike. Dinosaurs in Space introduces ETDs (Extra-Terrestrial Dinos) and explains how they became galactic. Three short chapters chronicle alien encounters, the joys of zero gravity, and a carnivore vs. herbivore faceoff. Crash Landing brings six ETDs back to present-day earth and shows their bumbling efforts to repair their spaceship and avoid some awkward encounters with curious kids.

Here's an offbeat story about a catboy who's best friend is a sunflower named Fred. When Fred and his buddy pass by a skeptical skateboarding cat-kid, he asks sneering questions about Fred and the duo's friendship. After a near miss with wilting heat and a fun, rain-soaked flower dance, the former skeptic decides that his new friends aren't so weird after all . . . at least no weirder than he is! This charming addition to the Balloon Toons series offers a canny portrait of how kids project personalities and feelings onto toys and other objects, and conveys the satisfaction felt when making an unexpected friend.

Paging Doctor Bugspit! And keep that Glurb away from the toilet paper! Comical creatures star in two wildly kooky cartoon episodes, full of rotten mustard smells, cures that definitely won't work, and strenuous eyebrow exercises. Elise Gravel offers two books in one in this new Balloon Toons format. The dubious outer space "medical" practice of Doctor Bugspit—featuring oddball patients, staff, and cases—offers the perfect prescription for curing boredom and lack-of-humor-itis in A Day in the Office of Doctor Bugspit . Adopt a Glurb is a primer on raising the teeny, stinky, bite-y creature known as the glurb, packed with tips, information, and zany advice.