If you grinned at Bunyip Bluegum’s prim word-wrangling and the bush ballads that break out while Bill Barnacle and Sam Sawnoff fend off the Puddin’-Thieves, you’ll love the quips and puns in The Phantom Tollbooth. Milo’s trip to Dictionopolis and Digitopolis turns language into a playground—much like Albert the Puddin’ turns lunch into a running joke—with scenes (like the Spelling Bee vs. the Humbug) that echo the gleeful verbal sparring you enjoyed.

If the mock-serious trials, officious magistrates, and endlessly silly scuffles over Albert made you cackle, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy delivers that same wink-at-the-reader attitude. Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect stumble through bureaucratic doom (think Vogon paperwork as cosmic ‘puddin’-thieves’) and deadpan asides that skewer common sense the way Norman Lindsay’s verse needles pomposity.

If you liked how Bunyip Bluegum falls in with Bill, Sam, and Albert for a series of jaunty, bite-sized adventures—each a new dust-up with the Puddin’-Thieves—Winnie-the-Pooh offers similarly comforting chapters. Pooh’s visits to Rabbit, Eeyore’s tail mishaps, and ‘a little something’ at teatime echo that gentle, repeat-the-fun charm of roaming the bush with a faithful (and talkative) pudding.

If the sheer delight of a cut-and-come-again pudding that talks back—and switches courses on command—won you over, The Magic Faraway Tree brims with the same merry, anything-can-happen magic. Each visit to a new land at the tree’s top feels like stumbling on Albert’s next absurd flavor, with mischief and wonder prioritized over peril.

If you reveled in the surreal spectacle of a quarrelsome, self-refilling pudding and the daft showdowns with the Puddin’-Thieves, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland doubles down on that dreamlike absurdity. Alice’s tea with the Hatter and March Hare, arguments about meaning that twist in circles, and eat-me/drink-me surprises capture the same topsy-turvy spirit that makes Albert such a delicious companion.