Books with a bit of weirdness are always popular with kids. These tales contain just the right amount of strange.

"How Weird Is It? A Freaky Book All about Strangeness" by Ben Hillman; Scholastic; 48 pages; $15.99.

One of my new favorite books for children, this oddly appealing nonfiction picture book starts off with a bang — depicting a family with green skin and a back cover with a mummy leaning down to pet a mummy cat. Those two images are certainly weird enough to entice kids of all ages, and adults, to flip through the fascinating pages. Mind boggling oddness abounds, with two-page picture and text sections about more than 20 strange phenomena from nature: from "sleepy bacteria," to how birds' brains contain magnets, to how humans are related to the fungus family.

Other magical sections explain how the octopus is a chameleon, why TV static is really the cosmic microwave "universe exploding" right in front of your eyes, and how a cute tiny "water bear" can survive after being heated to 300 degrees Fahrenheit or frozen to almost absolute zero (-460 degrees).

Best of all, the book's amazing photographs are doctored to be even weirder: the photograph of the family with mushroom heads sitting down for dinner, or the dissected frog on a hospital bed, with baby frogs flying out of his belly.

Kids aged 6 to 12 will certainly get a kick out of "How Weird Is It?"

"Tales From Outer Suburbia" by Shaun Tan; Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic; 94 pages; $19.99.

The prolific Shaun Tan won many accolades for "The Arrival," a wordless tour de force full of visual elegance. His latest puts an otherworldly spin on suburbia — introducing an exchange student from another world, a blind reindeer who demands a special offering and even a neighborhood where brightly painted missiles decorate every yard.

Hauntingly beautiful sketches, with intriguingly imaginative tales, make Tan's latest picture book a contender. There are words in this book; each is worth its weight in gold like "Have you ever wondered what happens to all the poems people write? The poems they never let anyone else read?" or "Grandpa's Story." And describe strange stick figures in a neighborhood: "Turning your sprinklers on will discourage them from hanging around the front of your house; loud music and smoke from barbeques will also keep them away."

Dreamy and highly imaginative, "Tale from Outer Suburbia" is the epitome of weird, in a good way.

"Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed" by Mo Willems; Hyperion; 32 pages; $16.99.

Mo Willems' picture books are popular with the preschool crowd. His knack for relating his unique, humorous ideas about young children's likes and dislikes are spot on. This little tale introduces a not-so-naked mole rat named Wilbur, who is ridiculed by his naked pals when he explains that he can be fancy, or cool, or funny, or "just an astronaut" in clothes.

Readers will learn that naked mole rats can be very sarcastic, as Wilbur takes them up on a tongue-in-cheek idea to buy a clothing store. In the end, Wilbur's esteemed Grand-Pah gives a speech, convincing the other naked mole rats that, yes, clothes can be fun indeed.

A bit of good-humored oddness fills the sparse, tan pages peppered with naked mole rats, dressed and undressed. The book's ending — "Much has been said about that day, but for this story, you only need to know three things: 1. Some of the mole rats were naked. 2. Some of the mole rats were clothed. 3. All of the mole rats had a great time" — is deadpan and just "off enough" for young children.

"Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone" series; Walker and Company; 70 pages and $9.99 each.

Adapted from Rod Serling's original "Twilight Zone" scripts, this graphic novel series takes one of the most iconic TV series into the 21st century for kids. In "The After Hours," a dissatisfied female shopper has an unusual problem when one shopping trip is marked final sale. The cartoon's final message has all the deadpan weirdness of the original; it ends this intriguing tale on normalcy: "Marsha White, in her normal and natural state. A wooden lady with a painted face, who once a year takes on the characteristics of someone as normal and as flesh and blood as you and I."

Another new entry in the graphic novel series, "Walking Distance," tells the odd tale of a man who takes the journey of a lifetime looking for redemption, but he finally finds something entirely different.

Kids ages 7 or 8 and up who like a bit of weirdness in their reading will certainly gravitate toward this new "Twilight Zone" graphic series, already praised by Serling's widow.

To find out more about Lee Littlewood and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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