When my granddaughter Ella was around two and I was visiting her from out of town, I accompanied a night-night kiss and an affectionate head bump with the nonsensical phrase, "Oinky boinky!"

Don't ask me why.

Shortly after, my son told me that she'd taken up the expression and was using it on others.

I thought her creative act and gesture of affection deserved recognition and encouragement, not to mention that, being long distance, I needed to score some major grandpa points.

So I decided to create a book about it, and in the months leading up to her third birthday, I patched together absurd images from nineteenth-century dictionary illustrations and wrote the story of a little girl's search to understand the crazy things adults can say.

And here it is.

(By the way, she was completely unimpressed.)