Oddball concepts inspire a lot of fun

Picture books make the fantastic seem attainable.

Regular children can, say, dance with wild things or make friends with dragons.

Such ideas appeal to adults, too, because they symbolize more — getting to know something (or someone) unfamiliar makes them understandable.

Considered in a different light, though, the book concepts seem plain weird.

Make friends with firebreathing lizards 10 times your size? That’s a danger we would warn our children about, for the good of our species.

“Great, Now We’ve Got Barbarians,” written by James Carter Eaton and illustrated by Mark Fearing, features an especially zany concept: A sloppy boy ignores his mom’s warnings to clean up, and Vikings invade their home, scavenging for his food scraps.

The Vikings take over, using the mom’s makeup as war paint and stealing the boy’s blankets to make forts.

My 7-year-old loved the zaniness, and I loved that the boy got annoyed by things he’d probably done to his parents.

“I realized that Mom might exaggerate sometimes,” he says near the end, “but that doesn’t mean she’s wrong.”

The book gives me a great excuse to yell at my daughter, “Pick this up or we’ll get barbarians!” And she does what I ask — with a laugh instead of a whine.

Another new it’s-strangewhen-you-think-about-it read is “Norton and Alpha” by Kristyna Litten.

In the book, a robot picks through the seeming leftovers of human civilization. He builds a mechanical dog friend and finds a flower that the two put through rigorous scientific testing before deciding that it’s useless. They toss the flower out the window, and, wondrously, it multiplies, turning the bare landscape beautiful (which is shown in fold-out pages).

The sweet story is postapocalyptic — a concept I did not point out to my daughter.

A children’s book, of course, can enchant readers without being a fantasy.

“Green Pants” by Kenneth Kraegel tells the story of

“Great, Now We’ve Got Barbarians” (Penguin Random House, 40 pages, $15.99) by Jason Carter Eaton and Mark Fearing “Norton and Alpha” (Sterling, 44 pages, $14.95) by Kristyna Litten “Green Pants” (Candlewick, 40 pages, $15.99) by Kenneth Kragel

Jameson, who will wear only pants that are green. Then his cousin and his cousin’s enchanting fiancee ask Jameson to take part in their wedding, which requires a black tuxedo. He agonizes. “He should wear the black pants over the green pants,” my daughter said.

Jameson does — but not for the whole wedding day because, in green pants, he dances awesomely.

We’ve all known (or maybe been) a child with a particular clothing obsession. Jameson’s story finds straightforward delight in that universality.