POOP

A raccoon drops a silly word over and over and OVER…but a little mouse will have none of it.

Set up to be a hilarity-inducing storytime back and forth, this monosyllabic all-caps exchange alternates an overalls-clad and increasingly frustrated raccoon provocatively misidentifying round objects with the titular epithet in louder and louder type and the poker-faced mouse (with a page turn) offering contradictory, rhyming counters. First, after the raccoon points at an egg and says, “POOP,” a squad of nattily dressed chickens marches out of a “NOPE, COOP.” Then a ball of yarn forms a “NOPE, LOOP,” and then a bear sinks a basketball through a “NOPE, HOOP,” and on, as characters pile up. Finally the crowd of followers at last stops at an ice cream truck for a “NOPE, SCOOP” (or two or three or four). And when, in a turn likely to excite as much honest dismay as schadenfreude in young audiences, the raccoon’s ice cream falls to the ground, the mouse answers his dismal “POOP” with a sympathetic “YEP.” The growing parade of simply drawn, egg-shaped animals in Hoffmann’s cheery illustrations adds both comical side business to keep readers poring over the pages and a clear sense of anticipation to the proceedings, and a pug in the last scene delivers a final, literal twist.

A crowd pleaser sure to squeeze out piles of giggles.