The Butt Book

by Artie Bennett, Mike Lester (Illustrator)

Overview

Tall butts, short butts, round butts, flat butts.

Butts on mummies and butts on mommies.

Butts on giraffes and elephants and dogs and... FISH?

Yes, even fish butts are celebrated in this tribute to backsides, rumps, tushies, keisters, heinies, and derrieres. Dozens of funny rhymes and pages of laugh-out-loud pictures pay homage to a body part that keeps kids and grown-ups giggling with glee.

Bottoms up!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781599903118
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	01/01/2010
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	527,302
Product dimensions:	10.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	5 - 7 Years

About the Author

Artie Bennett is the executive copy editor for Random House Children's Books and he writes a little on the side (but not on the backside!). He's the co-author of 101 Ways to Say Vomit, for those who enjoy a good "gag," and the author of The Dinosaur Joke Book: A Compendium of Pre-Hysteric Puns. He enjoys the three B's: birdwatching, botanizing, and bike riding. He's been butt-besotted since stumbling upon the word "callipygian" at age three. He lives with his wife, Leah, in the bowels of Brooklyn.

You can learn markedly more than you'd wish to know about the author by visiting www.artiebennett.com

Mike Lester is an artist/animator whose books include his own A is for Salad and Erica Perl's Ninety-Three in my Family, both of which won the National Cartoonist Society's Reuben Award for Best Book Illustrations. He lives with his family in Rome, GA.

You can visit him online at www.mikelester.com

Editorial Reviews

Energetic, amusing, . . . tasteful, and the verse is reliably and rewardingly silly.” - BCCB

“Good-natured hymn of praise to rear ends in all their variety. . . . There are plenty of laughs here and not a single snigger as the matter-of-fact tone keeps the momentum moving right along.” - The Horn Book

“On target for the intended audience. . . . The lively and slick cartoons, done in scratchboard and watercolor, suit the subject matter.” - School Library Journal

“Rhyming couplets invite readers to regard animal butts and human ones, historical butts and modern ones, plain old American butts and exotic foreign ones. . . . Energetic watercolor-and-scratchboard illustrations.” - Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

A genial red-haired boy with an enquiring mind guides us through this good-natured hymn of praise to rear ends in all their variety. Rhyming couplets cover butt synonyms, characteristics, and raison d'être, as watercolor and scratchboard illustrations place us in scenes from art galleries to ancient Egypt to a fun fair. The text includes a few nods to natural history ("Patches found on baboon rumps / help them when they sit on stumps") or international usage ("In England, where they call moms 'mums,' / people call their buttocks 'bums'"), but the major point seems to be that butts make the whole world one. (Well, with the exception of snakes.) There are plenty of laughs here and not a single snigger as the matter-of-fact tone keeps the momentum moving right along. "Why do we have butts? Perchance, / a place to place our underpants?

Horn Book

The text rattles on for a little too long without any particularly conclusive destination, but it's energetic, amusing, and yet largely tasteful, and the verse is reliably and rewardingly silly. Goofily drafted scratchboard figures, with a geometric regularity to the hatchwork that suggests linocuts, are tinted with softly regular shades that emphasize flesh tones and fanciful animal hues. Uses this for revving up the silliness anytime, or for bringing a health and anatomy lesson to a satisfyingly comic end.

The Bulletin

K-Gr 2—This rhyming book covers several aspects of various rear ends, with humor that's mostly on target for the intended audience: "Why do we have butts? Perchance,/a place to place our underpants?" The accompanying picture shows a boy wearing two pairs of underpants, the extra pair on his head. A little learning is lightly woven in: "Some names for butts have foreign flair:/tuchas, keister, derriere!" The lively and slick cartoons, done in scratchboard and watercolor, suit the subject matter. Unfortunately, the book states, "Eyes and ears are much respected, but the butt has been neglected," which isn't really true. The timing is such that this title comes on the tail end of a glut of butt books. If you already have Ayun Halliday's Always Lots of Heinies at the Zoo (Disney, 2009) and Fran Manushkin's The Tushy Book (Feiwel & Friends, 2009), you may want to think twice about stocking yet another one.—Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, IL

School Library Journal

This paean to the posterior opens with the claim that, "[e]yes and ears are much respected, / but the butt has been neglected." It would be legitimate to wonder whether Bennett and his publisher regret this overconfident statement, publishing as it does in the wake of Always Lots of Heinies at the Zoo, by Ayun Halliday and illustrated by Dan Santat, The Tushy Book, by Fran Manushkin and illustrated by Tracy Dockray, and the sublime Chicken Cheeks, by Michael Ian Black and illustrated by Kevin Hawkes (all 2009). But a contract's a contract, so here is yet another book about bottoms in all their glory. Rhyming couplets invite readers to regard animal butts and human ones, historical butts and modern ones, plain old American butts and exotic foreign ones. While it's normally a given that any mention of the word "butt" and glimpse of a naked cheek is enough to send preschoolers into gales of helpless laughter, one has to wonder if even they haven't become jaded by the butt glut. Lester's energetic watercolor-and-scratchboard illustrations can't lift this book above the rest. (Picture book. 3-5)

Kirkus Reviews