Chicken Butt!

by Erica S. Perl, Henry Cole (Illustrator)

Overview

You know what?
What?
Chicken butt!
 
The classic schoolyard joke has been recast as an irreverent picture book, with call-and-response parts for parent and child. The word repetition in Erica S. Perl’s text, and wonderfully comic illustrations by beloved artist Henry Cole, make this a particularly inviting book for new readers, as does the opportunity to “trick†? a parent or other adult into participating in a very silly joke. The humor builds to a surprising and satisfying conclusion. Warning: Kids will want to read this one over and over and over again! “An unhinged piece of slap-happy rhyming…rocket-propelled artwork…the romp is a powerful piece of cacophony, more frenetic by the moment.†?—Kirkus Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613124338
Publisher:	Abrams
Publication date:	10/05/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
Lexile:	AD220L (what's this?)
File size:	46 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	3 - 5 Years

About the Author

Erica S. Perl is the author of Chicken Butt!, Chicken Bedtime Is Really Early, Totally Tardy Marty, and many other picture books. She lives in Washington, DC.; Henry Cole is the New York Times bestselling illustrator of numerous picture books for children, including Chicken Butt! He lives in Wilton Manors, Florida.

Editorial Reviews

Dad is engrossed in the paper, which of course makes him a ripe target for a silliness offensive by his son. "You know what?" says the boy, with a gleam in his eyes worthy of Bart Simpson. "What?" says unsuspecting parent, as a wide-eyed chicken peers around the corner, conspicuously out of place in their living room. "CHICKEN BUTT!" shouts the son, the words plastered on the airborne fowl's expansive backside. An increasingly hysteric call and response ensues, in which Chicken gives a hyper performance, Dad moves from bemused to exasperated and Perl (Ninety-Three in My Family) manages to rhyme "You know how?" with "chicken eyebrow" and "You know who?" with "chicken tattoo." Cole (the Katy Duck series), as wryly effervescent as ever, doesn't try to make this story anything more than it is: one of those treasured (by kids at least) moments of parent-child interaction that has no redeeming social value. When he covers a spread with "CHICKEN BUTT!" scrawled a dozen times on top of 18 emotive chickens, it's clear that mania is the message. Ages 3-6. (Apr.)

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Publishers Weekly

K-Gr 2

On the prefatory pages, a boy meets a chicken while at a newsstand with his father, and it follows him home. Once they are all settled on the couch, the chicken prompts the infamous rhyming conversation between father and son. "'You know what?' 'What?' 'Chicken butt.' 'You know why?' 'Why?' 'Chicken thigh!'" And so it goes. The plot is simple-the conversation escalates until the exasperated father says, "Enough! No more!" But the child continues, giving the story a new twist. Cole's illustrations and the page design work to make this book really enjoyable. The dialogue is written in different fonts-the father's in black in an authoritative typewriter font and the son's in bold red. The father, reading his newspaper, wants nothing more than some peace, while the boy cavorts with the pop-eyed chicken. The illustrations are manic and raucous, and the humor is evident throughout. This book would be fun to read aloud with children in two voices or act out at storytimes and in classrooms. Kids will definitely love it.-Susan E. Murray, Glendale Public Library, AZ

School Library Journal

On one hand, this is an utter goofball of a book, an unhinged piece of slap-happy rhyming. On the other, it is a challenge to engage. It depends on the reader's mood. If that mood is like the father here-preoccupied, disconnected, maybe a bit grumpy-it could probably use this type of elevation. "You know what?" asks a boy. "What?" says his dad, slouching behind the newspaper. "CHICKEN BUTT!" hollers the boy, which gets his dad's attention. "You know why?" "Why?" "CHICKEN THIGH!" Off the book goes, very merrily energetic, served on a plate of Cole's rocket-propelled artwork (which features gleeful close-ups of the chicken anatomy in question). Read as a duet, the romp is a powerful piece of cacophony, more frenetic by the moment, which the book's targeted age group will allow for only at the upper end-so some rapid voice-flipping will be necessary. Then again, if an adult reader's mood is already fine, this uber-farce may send that adult, like this book's dad, round the bend, where a drink should be waiting. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews