BELCHES, BURPS, AND FARTS—OH MY!

The logical successor to Bennett’s previous “classics,” The Butt Book and Poopendous! (2010, 2012).

This snicker-inducing topic will be difficult for kids to resist. Those wayward gasses are always escaping—children might as well learn their physiology. Breaking his windy subject into two sections (with farts getting the lion’s share of the attention), Bennett focuses on burps first. Loose, rhyming couplets make mention of trapped gasses and the fizz of soda. But readers will have to decipher a bit on their own as well. “Talk too much when chomping chow?” is a nifty way to make a rhyme with “cow,” but it does not lend itself to an immediate understanding that one can swallow air while chewing. The second part is dedicated to farts. Let’s face it, they are far more fun. Greenish-yellow puffs and smell lines abound. A bit more science is offered here; microbes and bacteria are introduced, though they are never fully explained. If nothing else, young readers can practice counting to 14 during the calendarlike spread depicting the average number of farts per day. Sentences proclaiming themselves “facts” are appended at the end, though some are debatable. Can the definition of “morning thunder” really fall under that category?

A light, comic look at two bodily functions with high child appeal—but not noteworthy nonfiction.