CM Magazine: Everything I Know About Poop.

________________ CM . . . . Volume XXIV Number 38. . . . June 1, 2018

cover
Everything I Know About Poop.

Jaume Copons. Illustrated by Mercé Gali.
Richmond Hill, ON: Firefly Books, August, 2018.
32 pp., hardcover, $12.95.
ISBN 978-0-228-10083-6.

Subject Heading:
Feces-Juvenile literature.

Preschool / Ages 1-4.

Review by Dave Jenkinson.

*** /4

excerpt:

Everyone knows how
to make a nice poop.

And people who do not
know, learn sooner or later.

Promotional material accompanying the review copy describes Everything I Know About Poop as “An absolute must-have for toilet resistant kids.” I suspect most parents and/or grandparents have encountered a child who simply “refuses” to use a toilet for her/his bowel movements. How/where this bodily function is performed can, unfortunately, quickly escalate into a battle of wills between a child and one or more adults in her/his life. In Everything I Know About Poop, author Copons attempts to lower the tension by reminding everyone that pooping is a natural function, and he begins by pointing out that siblings, parents, even grandparents all poop, his simple, direct text supported by Gali’s humourous cartoon art.

From humans, Copons moves on to the pooping behaviours of animals, including hippos, birds, dogs, cats, cows, goats, insects, elephants and whales. After showing how these creatures defecate (and, in some cases, describing what their “scat” looks like), Copons asks:

What about me?
What about you?
How do we poop?

Instead of telling “you” what to do, Copons describes what “he” does.

When I feel ready to poop,
I run down the hallway to the toilet,
my pants already undone.

Seated on the toilet, the narrator acknowledges that sometimes only “a few farts escape”, and other times he has a hard time pooping and gets red in the face, but then suddenly, “PLOP!... A very nice poop! After saying goodbye to his poop, he flushes “us[ing] my fingertips to flush” and then washes and dries his hands.

Whether the contents of Everything I Know About Poop will actually lead to the desired toilet pooping behaviour, as opposed to pull-up diaper or underpant poops, remains to be seen. Nonetheless, the book is worth sharing, if only to learn about the defecation habits of some animals. In particular, kids will delight in the hippo’s “bathroom” behaviours.

A hippo poops.

With its tail spinning like a helicopter,
it flings poop through the air.

Recommended.

Dave Jenkinson, CM,’s editor, lives in Winnipeg, MB.

To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.

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