This work theoretically and empirically addresses the relationship between language acquisition and the development of humor. What is a joke? How do jokes function linguistically and psychologically? How does verbal humor change between preschool age and the end of primary school? What role does the acquisition of narrative skills play in this? How does children's humor differ from adult humor? These and other questions are discussed based on a cross-sectional study that includes four age groups from kindergarten to sixth grade. As the data shows, children's jokes exhibit a number of characteristic features that are of great interest from both a linguistic and developmental psychology perspective. The empirical analysis focuses on the question of at what age children acquire the various narrative skills that enable them to tell jokes not only coherently but also effectively. The study illustrates how the development of verbal humor can trace linguistic-cognitive developmental processes that are not as observable in other contexts of children's language production.