About This Book:
It’s Koala’s birthday party and everyone is having a great time. But some of the guests are having a little trouble using the bathroom… Elephant waits too long before going and doesn’t make it to the toilet in time, while Squirrel forgets to knock before entering the bathroom and Zebra forgets to flush!
Review Contributed By Karen Yingling, Staff Reviewer*
Potty Etiquette for After Toilet Training
It’s easy to forget that toilet training is a process that doesn’t end when a child is out of diapers; there are plenty of mishaps that occur even when kids are in the early elementary school. Just ask any kindergarten teacher! Pee and Poo is a great book to remind readers of some of the tips and tricks that will ensure dry pants and happy days long after they have forgotten diapers.
Framed around a group of animals attending a birthday party and experiencing a number of mishaps, this story gives young ones of important toilet etiquette. Don’t wait too long to go, knock at the bathroom door, make sure to wash hands, and say “excuse me” if you pass gas. There are also tips on what to do if you miss the toilet, as well as why you shouldn’t linger too long or use too much toilet paper. At the end of the book, all of these reminders are recapped on a two page spread. I appreciated that there was also a reminder that one should go to the bathroom right before bed; it should perhaps also include that children shouldn’t drink a lot of water after brushing their teeth at night!
The pastel illustrations are charming, and while the animals are shown in the bathroom on the toilet with their pants down on occasion, they are very discreet, even when showing cat peeing and missing the toilet. There’s something about the gentleness of the pictures that won’t encourage readers to laugh; perhaps it is the look of mortification on the faces!
This is really a book for slightly older readers, perhaps ages four or five and up. There is a lot of text, and multiple explanations for each topic. It reminded me slightly of Scarry’s The Manners Book, probably because that also features animals at parties.
Not surprisingly, this was originally published in Spanish and has a very European approach to broaching the topic of bathroom manners. It’s been a while since I’ve had to read Cole’s Your New Potty or Gomi’s Everyone Poops to anyone, but this is a great book to have after multiple recitations of books like Hayden’s How Do You Know When You Need to Go, Willem’s Time to Pee, Vestergaard and Petrone’a Potty Animals: What to Know When You You’ve Gotta Go!, and Frankel’s Once Upon a Potty have given children the basic skills they need to successfully use the bathroom.
