Scieszka, Jon. Knights of the Kitchen Table

Jon Scieszka really is quite brilliant; my favorite book by him remains the seminal aesthetic theory text, Art?.

This book, the first in the Time Warp Trio series, is a tiny little confection of breakneck plot interspersed with some gross humor. Joe gets a mysterious book as a birthday present; upon opening it, he, Fred, and Sam get transported to an Arthurian England that's not especially concerned with historical accuracy, as we see when the trio manages to solve the problem of the menacing gross giant and menacing big dragon by getting them to fight each other.

There's not a lot to be said about a book 64 pages long, but it's cute, it's silly, it's appropriately disgusting, and the prose is a heck of a lot livelier than is typical for very short and easy chapter books.