Treehouse Tales: too SILLY to be told ... UNTIL NOW!: No. 1 bestselling series

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Never having seen Chronicle, I couldn’t tell you if “Telepaths of Glory” is similarly uninspired, but taken on its own merits, it’s a shapeless segment that happens to have a cute ending of Maggie messing with reality.

Griffiths and Denton started working on children’s books together in 1997 with their classic, Just Tricking! The best offering from the past five years, “Treehouse XXIX” at first seems a recipe for a let-down: three movie parodies in a late-period Simpsons episode. This new novel is crammed full with 13 fun filled, action packed short stories to keep you enthralled and entertained.It has a lot more writing than the usual Treehouse series of books, which might put off some of the fans of the series. The looseness and inventiveness of "The Shinning" or "Bart Simpson's Dracula" is gone, and in its place is a rigid walkthrough the film's plot, stuffed with easy gags, throwaway references to current events that probably won't age well, and showing off a knowledge of Stephen King stories. Not only are standards of writing improved, but the children are much more aware of grammatical structure and spelling – all this in a fun and creative format! King Homer” is one of the earliest movie parodies to play things so safe, but the black-and-white has its charm and Smithers gets in a classic line.

Best of all is the opening "A-Gobble-Ypto," a rare parody from the show's later years with the fun and imagination of its early spoofs. It’s arguably a more creative spin on the “multiple Homers” idea of an earlier "Treehouse," and it has fun with alternate versions of Mr. A wonderful thing about the earliest "Treehouses" is how nearly all the segments preserve the family’s relationships with one another; they place the Simpsons in horror situations without turning them into self-parodies or disregarding their bonds. Lisa dreams of a world devastated by a monkey’s paw, Bart casts himself as Anthony Fremont in a Twilight Zone parody, and Homer imagines a mad science experiment by Mr. Treehouse XXIV” features my favorite couch gag of the series (courtesy of guest director Guillermo del Toro and his insane number of horror movie riffs), and what’s even better, the couch gag isn’t the best thing in the episode.Homer's efforts to be a good dad to his daughter is always pleasant to see, and he has some really good lines here as he deals with a creepy trio of stalkers.