Your caption has been selected More than anyone could possibly want to know about the New Yorker cartoon caption contest

Wood, a Chicago lawyer who has won the New Yorker's caption contest eight times, debuts with a diverting overview of the contest's history and offers tips on how to win it. After the magazine's cartoon editor Bob Mankoff introduced the contest in 1999, it grew quickly in popularity and drew thousands of entries from ordinary readers and even such celebrities as composer John Williams, journalist Maureen Dowd, and film critic Roger Ebert, who won in 2011. The task of sifting through 10,000 entries each week fell to Mankoff's assistants before the magazine decided to crowdsource the first phase of the selection process through an online portal in 2016. Wood outlines 29 suggestions for writing winning captions, recommending that readers "eliminate unnecessary words," "make the speaker oblivious," and end captions with the punch line. Wood includes a bounty of cartoons illustrating the advice and serves up plenty of amusing pieces of trivia (Zachary Kanin, Mankoff's former assistant who went on to write for Saturday Night Live, recalls weeding through entries before crowdsourcing was implemented: "There were always about five hundred submissions that were like, 'Good news. Now you're getting a better deal through Geico' "). New Yorker readers will get a kick out of this. Illus. Agent: Daniel Greenberg, Levine Greenberg Rostan. (June)

An appealing book about a surprisingly difficult task: writing a good cartoon caption. It is fair to say that the New Yorker caption contest is a genuine cultural phenomenon, attracting thousands of entries every week. Wood, who has won the competition an unmatched eight times (and made it to the final round 15 times), is perfectly situated to examine why a good caption works, as well as explain how the contest operates. The contest is so popular that simply managing the entries, as well as the public vote on a selection of finalists, has become a huge logistical task for the magazine's editors. There is no prize for the winner, other than bragging rights. In this entertaining book, Wood includes 175 of the best cartoons and captions, aiming to distill the essence of the humor. Some of the captions are droll, some are wryly thoughtful, and some are laugh-out-loud hilarious. Wood believes that it is the limitation of a caption, where everything must fit in one short comment, that is the key to its appeal. He provides a long list of criteria, highlighting the importance of identifying the speaker, telling a story, avoiding vulgarity, connecting to the details of the cartoon, and selecting the best from several options. "If your caption is selected as a finalist," he writes, "launch an aggressive social media campaign to win the popular vote. Don't rely solely on email." Throughout, the author is charmingly eccentric and pleasing. Interestingly, numerous comedians regularly enter the contest but do no better than other people. Wood, for his part, is not professionally humorous; he is a lawyer. Now that's funny. Bob Mankoff, the former cartoon editor at the New Yorker, provides the foreword. Wood has a great time here, mixing the bizarre, the jocular, and the wise into a clever package. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.