A Giraffe Did One

April 23, 2012
In the tradition of Everyone Poops, Pallotta’s gently mischievous story features cute animals that share one thing in common: occasional flatulence. “A flock of birds flew by. OK, who did it? We’ll never know which one it was.” Meanwhile, a fox, seen peering coyly around a tree, “was sneaky when she did it,” and a frog, who stares up at readers with a guilty smile and a few bubbles in the water around him, “was slimy when he did it.” Mai-Wyss’s pale watercolors imbue the animals with more than a little anthropomorphism, with many wearing adorable “Who, me?” expressions. If readers are unclear about what the animals did (it’s never specified), there will be little doubt when, in the final spread, a human boy “did one too,” and his mother asks him to say “Excuse me.” Ages 4–8.