What transforms a staunch humor supporter into an even more zealous advocate of laughter? Well, it’s a bit like baseball — or cricket, for that matter. Once you start watching the games with any sort of intensity, you gradually notice the underdog (I used to be a Boston Red Sox fan) and start focusing emotional energy on the poor thing. And humor, alas, has tended to be something of an underdog in the big literary box scores.
For me, as a judge for the 1993 Australian Children’s Book of the Year Awards, reading and writing reports on the 243 submitted 1992 titles was a bit like watching a season’s worth of games in half a season. And I discovered that the whole process was a mighty effective way of cementing my allegiance to good quality humor: I found myself increasingly grateful for an occasional burst of laughter. I cheered for wit, delighted to see it getting up to bat a bit more frequently than it has in recent years’
I …