The Laugh: the psychology behind the book

At a glance

Ages

4 to 8 · read-aloud from about four, early readers alone

What it practices

Knowing that a laugh can mean many things, and asking which one

The misreading

A friend’s laugh, taken as laughing at you

Opens and closes on

I like laughing with you.

Length

About 105 words in all · 20 lines, one per page · 32-page paperback, 8.5 × 8.5 in

SEL competencies (CASEL)

Social awareness (reading others’ intentions) · Self-awareness (embarrassment and hurt) · Relationship skills (repair)

Editions

Paperback $8.99 (ISBN 979-8-9979707-1-0) · Kindle $2.99 · Spanish: La risa, paperback (ISBN 979-8-9979707-6-5) and Kindle · buy direct or find a store

The two sides

Read from the front, it is Bob’s story. Turn the book over and read the same pages from the back, and it is Otto’s. Neither boy is wrong about everything, and neither is right about everything.

The psychology behind it

Laughter is an ambiguous cue. The same sound can mean joy, relief, nerves, affection or mockery, and the listener has to decide which, usually in a second and often while embarrassed. Research on social information processing describes this decision as the interpretation step that sits between noticing a cue and responding to it¹. Children who tend to resolve ambiguous moments with a hostile reading get into more conflict with peers; across 41 studies, hostile attribution of intent was consistently linked to aggressive behavior².

The good news in that research is that interpretation can be practiced. The BrainPower program taught elementary-school boys to tell accidental, helpful and hostile intentions apart from social cues, and their hostile attributions and endorsement of retaliation fell compared with control groups³. Those children were older than this book’s readers and were chosen for aggression, so the comparison is about the mechanism, not a promise of the same result. But the skill being trained is exactly the one Bob is missing: considering that a cue might not mean what it first seems to mean.

The book names Bob’s mistake precisely, and gently. Otto’s page says: You said it like a fact. You never asked. That is the move every child (and adult) makes: an interpretation hardens into a fact before anyone has checked it. Later Bob says the same words about himself, I said it like a fact. I never asked. The repair is not an apology speech. It is a recognition, in the same words his friend used.

Otto’s side carries a second, quieter lesson. He was laughing because yesterday he took the same jump into the same puddle and Nobody laughed. That was the worst part. A laugh shared with a friend turns an embarrassing fall into a good story; a fall with nobody there is just lonely. The book shows a child that laughing with someone and laughing at someone sound alike, and that the difference is who is invited in.

How the words do it

One hinge sits near the end, a two-line exchange: Yesterday, nobody. / Today, you. Because the book is read in both directions, Bob’s line Yesterday, nobody. has two different neighbors. Forward, it is followed by Otto’s Today, you. That is a turn toward friendship: yesterday there was no one, today there is you. Backward, the line that follows it is Otto’s That was the worst part. Now the same two words become the loneliness underneath the laugh.

The middle of the book is Otto’s Not at you. At me. Forward, it comes just after Otto sits down in the puddle, so it explains the gesture. Backward, it arrives before the reader has reached Bob’s jump, so the second reader learns halfway through what the first reader only found out near the end.

Besides the printed lines Ha? and Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha., the laughter is lettered big into the pictures: on the covers, on the first and last spreads, and on the spread right after Bob lands in the puddle. The same letters look like fun on the cover and like they are aimed at Bob on that spread. Nothing about them changes except what the reader knows.

What the pictures do

The puddle is where the story happens, and the boys end up in it together. Bob is drawn wet and hurt but never angry. The sparrow sits on every one of Otto’s pages, so a pre-reader can follow which boy they are with. The laughter is lettered into the pictures, so a child can point at it and ask: is that a nice laugh or a mean one?

Questions to ask after reading

Open questions work best: there is no single right answer, and the point is for the child to explain what they think. Ask a few, not all.

In a classroom or counseling session

Before reading, ask the class to show a laugh that is kind and a laugh that is unkind. Read Bob’s side and stop at You are laughing at me. Ask what they think. Turn the book over for Otto’s side, then use the “both sides” questions. Ten minutes.

Ordering for a class or a school? Class sets are quoted directly: see orders and bulk copies.

Questions people ask about The Laugh