I NEED TO WEE!

Poor Alan really needs to go!

In a text rife with potty-humor punning, Alan (a blue teddy bear), is in line to go “whizzing down the very tall slide with his friends” at a fair when he starts dancing furiously. Giraffe and others ask why he’s doing this, and he explains “I need to wee!” But he doesn’t want to interrupt his fun to take care of business. Unfortunately, delays, long lines, and other impediments on the way to the potty make the situation “desperate.” Alan searches for quasi-potties but is stymied at every turn: He can’t use a doll’s toilet because it’s the “teeny tiny” one in her dollhouse; Robot objects to his attempted use of a teapot: “It’s…not a wee-pot!”; Magic Rabbit exclaims, “Don’t even think about it!” when Alan nearly pees in its hat. When Alan inadvertently ends up dancing away on stage, he wins first prize in a contest and is awarded a large, gold trophy, which he promptly uses to relieve himself. What happens to the resulting urine is left to readers to ponder, though perhaps many would rather leave the book aside without solving that mystery, since the story’s seemingly interminable chain of events grows tiresome well before its resolution. The busy digital illustrations with a palette verging on the garish don’t offer much relief.

A miss.