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Butt Book

Name: Butt Book
Author: Artie Bennett
ISBN: 9781599903118

by Artie Bennett, Mike Lester

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Overview

Make way for the butt! 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!

Synopsis

'The Butt Book:' The 'end' is what it's all about

The other day, you were watching TV and you got up for a minute to get something. When you came back, your brother had taken your seat and it's not like it had your name on it or anything, but still. He wouldn't get up, so you had to plant yourself somewhere else to watch TV and grumble.

Man, that makes you so mad!

Did you ever notice that, no matter where you sit, you're sitting on the same seat? You can thank your butt for that and more, as you'll see in "The Butt Book" by Artie Bennett, illustrated by Mike Lester.

Listen up. Use your ears. Look over here. Open your eyes. People are always telling you to use what's on your face, but has anybody ever told you to use your butt? Probably not, so this book aims to get your butt the respect it deserves.

Behinders come in many sizes. Some are bigger than others, some are flat and some kind of stick out. No matter what yours looks like, you were born with the one you have and you can't change it.

You might call your butt by a different name. It might be a tushy to you, or a tuchus, bottom, rear-end, heinie, backside or something else very different. In other countries, it might be called a derriere or a keister. Don't be confused, but in England, your butt would be called a "bum". No matter what you call it, it's still the same thing.

Even animals have butts. Elephant hinders are enormous. Giraffe's butts are waaaay up high. A mouse has a tiny one and a dog's wags hard when he's glad to see you. Fish have butts, but snakes - no, not so much.

So why do you have a butt? Well...it's a good place to put your underpants. It's a great place to sit. You can shake it when you dance. Without it, you wouldn't be able to ride your bike or sit on a seesaw or swing or do anything! Butts, as you can see, are as important as your eyes or ears, your head or your heart. In fact, in the end, your butt is probably one of the most useful things you've got.

Does your child have a bookshelf all his or her own? You can forget using it for awhile if you bring home this hilarious book. "The Butt Book" is going to become the most-read thing in your house.

If you asked me which I liked better - the pictures or the poem about patooties - I'd have a hard time deciding. Author Artie Bennett's rhyme is catchy and as cute as a bug's rear but on the other hand, the illustrations by Mike Lester are funny, too. In The End, you won't be able to keep from smiling at either one.

Perfect for read-aloud sessions, this book contains humor that any 4-to-8-year-old will love. So reach around and grab a copy of "The Butt Book", sit your fanny down and enjoy!

Horn Book

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?

About the Author, Artie Bennett

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.

Reviews

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Editorials

Horn Book

The Bulletin

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.

Children's Literature - Sarah Knight

Aptly titled, The Butt Book, describes the body part that so many children find amusing. Along the lines of The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss, showing not only silliness but also rhyme sequence, The Butt Book illustrates the notions of opposites and subtle differences through a very important body part: the butt. The premise of this whimsical book is that the butt has been neglected as a topic, and it is this book's goal to give the butt the forum to be discussed. This book shows differences of flat and round, tall and small, stripes and spots. Despite being a book on butts, it offers unique information that young readers would enjoy including the following facts: snakes lack a butt and the skunks have a gland in their butt. Additionally, this book tells the purpose of the butt, how that without a butt we could not sit or swing. Of course, this text also gives the young reader different ways to verbalize or articulate the word "butt," including some international terms: tuchas, keister and derrriere. The illustrations in this text are quite humorous; cartoon drawings of people and animals demonstrate the humor of the butt and how people's butts can be humorous. Children will truly appreciate the humor in the writing and the pictures. Reviewer: Sarah Knight

School Library Journal

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

Kirkus Reviews

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)