Chicken Butt's Back!

March 21, 2011
Mom is so over it: "I'll make this crystal clear:/ No more 'Chicken Butt' my dear." But for the star of Chicken Butt! every grocery store item (and everything his mother says) becomes fodder for his favorite joke. With a mischievous chicken egging him on, "Deer-ly Beloved Maple Syrup" gives rise to "DEER BUTT!" and Mom's confused "Which? But..." spawns a booty-shaking witch. Cole's kinetic, acrylic and colored pencil cartoons strike the right tone of mild disobedience, and Mom's half-lidded eyes telegraph her weariness. As in the book itself, parents will likely tire of the joke well before kids do. Ages 3âup.

March 1, 2011

Perl's young champion of all things gluteus returns in an evermore zany salute to the nether regions. As in Chicken Butt! (2009), this book can be read as a duet, although that will only apply to the "up" end of its stated audience for 3-year-olds and up. The text crackles: "Hey, you know what? / In fact, I do! And where and why and how and who. / But, Mom! / I'll make this crystal clear: no more 'Chicken Butt!' my dear..." And Coles' tickled-pink cartoonish artwork gets right into the mix, the chocolate chip to the cookie dough. The wordplay of inversions allows the boy to find butts aplenty as mother and son roam the aisles of a supermarket, there to find a deer butt, a cat butt, a witch butt, even a bear butt. "Stop right there," says mom. "But wait!" says her son. "He's eating under there! / He's what? Who's eating under where?" You see where this is going, and the force of gravity leads the text to poop and fart, which may be inevitable but feels like a shopworn laugh at the expense of more loopily inventive repartee. But still, the denouement is so merrily explosive that just to imagine the shrieking voices of a read-aloud is mightily cheering. (Picture book. 3-8)

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May 1, 2011

K-Gr 2-Fans of Chicken Butt! (Abrams, 2009) are going to love this sequel. Mom, whose face clearly shows she's heard enough, tries to resist any overtures or invitations to engage in butt-talk. She's savvy, but not savvy enough and quickly gets drawn into every word trap laid by her irrepressible son-and by Chicken-as they shop in a grocery store. Homonyms and homophones take center stage as "dear"/"deer," "which"/"witch," and "bare"/"bear" get attention, and Mom falls for the all-time biggest trap by asking, "Who's eating under where?" Kids are going to love the spread of the chicken holding pairs of underwear with bites taken out of them. This is the kind of book that siblings will beg to read to each other, especially since it's set up for two voices; parents may soon look like the mom in the book if they have to read it more than once or twice, but it may take a couple of reads to get the flow of the conversation, which is awkward in places. But not to worry; the humor is still there in Cole's exuberant acrylic and colored pencil illustrations.-Maggie Chase, Boise State University, ID

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