ALL ABOUT POOP

That perennial favorite, the mechanics of excretion, is well and alimentarily served by this app from Hayes and Vaughan.

With its youthful, rhyming voice-over—“Speaking of food, that’s where it starts— / poop, I mean (and also farts)”—it gives the topic frank fun that conveys the naturalness of the process without stripping away its comic strangeness. The actors here are a boy and his dog  (and of course the poops), who usher users stem to stern from mouthful to flush, stopping at every station along the way: esophagus, belly, intestine, toilet, cesspools and sewage lines. The body parts are situated and identified but not explored in any depth. Each page—there are 19—has one or more opportunities for engagement, sometimes opening up another page for greater explication, sometimes just allowing the dog to bark or the intestine to rumble; all is movement, as it were. One page is devoted to a gallery of poop shapes and another to the passing of gas—the accompanying sound effects are a hoot (flarp! squeep! pwip!). Tips (don’t play with poop, wash your hands) and trivia (herring communicate via flatulence, elephants poop 300 pounds a day) close out the proceedings.

Blunt and easeful—like having an older sibling give you the scoop.