Book excerpt: Wish kids came with instructions? At least you can take heart—and have a laugh—in the knowledge that the little dears confound and amuse all of us. Nothing captures our rollicking relationship with them—and theirs with the adult world—quite like New Yorker cartoons. The magazine's brilliant cartoonists (a good number of whom are rumored to have never completely left childhood behind) lead us from the hospital nursery, through toddlerhood, into the school years and beyond-to that long-lasting challenge of being an adult with parents. Selected by Robert Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker, this collection brings together 126 great cartoons (from artists including George Booth, Roz Chast, Leo Cullum, William Hamilton, Gahan Wilson, Jack Ziegler, and many more). The introduction from the one-and-only Roz Chast gives us a riot of insight and delight-which, come to think of it, is not a bad description of childhood.