EVEN SUPERHEROES USE THE POTTY

Rhyming verse and cartoon illustrations assure toilet-training readers that everyone, but everyone, uses the potty.

In this companion title to Even Superheroes Have to Sleep (2017), the cover art depicts a caped woman of color with brown skin and dark hair floating into a bathroom with a can-do look on her face, and then the front endpapers depict her soaring over a cityscape toward the page turn. Although she opens the book, she is not the protagonist. Instead, each double-page spread features a different character heading to the head. A firefighter, a ninja, a magician, a teacher, a zookeeper, a baker, a detective, a movie star, and a pilot are all depicted, and their characterizations present both men and women, white people and people of color, among them. Wordplay abounds from spread to spread to exploit mild scatological humor and offer a bevy of synonyms for the word “bathroom,” but rhythm and cadence often stumble, which will likely make read-alouds falter—still, aesthetics are not usually the priority in a potty book. The book culminates with a group of children rushing off to the potty, heeding the closing admonition: “Always listen to your body. / Even children use the potty.” An enclosed bathroom reward chart with stickers (only in the trade edition) might just prompt readers to head to the loo, too.

A potty-training book to go for.