Chicken Cheeks

PreS-Gr 1As every parent and teacher knows, little kids giggle over rear ends-and "Chicken Cheeks" is sure to keep them laughing. It features the hind quarters of animals, complete with silly names for them, from beginning towellend: "rhinoceros rump," "penguin patootie," "polar bear derriere," "turkey tushy." The close-up, color-saturated illustrationswhich are at the same time obviously hilarious and sneakily deadpantell a story. A brown bear stands poised atop a ladder, gazing thoughtfully up the skinny trunk of a tall, branch-free tree. He grabs a duck and sets it on his head. As he does, readers get an eyeful of the duck's rear; the accompanying text merely says "duck tail." Somehow a huge moose finds itself perched on top of the duck's head: "moose caboose." When a chicken precariously clasps the moose's antlers and proceeds to lay an egg on its nose, only the bear is smiling. Credibility is suspended by the time the moose sits on the duck without squashing it. Sixteen animals later, children can only laugh helplessly at the absurd ladder of animals balanced parallel to the tree trunk. By then they're able to see what the bear was trying to do-and how it backfires. Filled with visual jokes and amusing details, "Chicken Cheeks" is a lot more than a list of words for kids to snicker at."Susan Weitz, formerly at Spencer-Van Etten School District, Spencer, NY" Copyright 2009 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

A bear's inspired idea to create a tower of animals in order to reach some honey is all the premise that Hawkes ("Library Lion") and debut author Black need to launch an encyclopedia of animal posteriors. As the tower grows, readers learn that, in Hawkes and Black's alternative universe, a duck's rear end may be a tail, but a moose has a caboose, a turkey has a tushy, and a toucan a can. Hawkes's cast runs the gamut of goofy expressions; this smorgasbord of demeanors, coupled with the sheer improbability of the tower (the rhinoceros and giraffe are stacked upside-down on top of a very spindly flamingo), make this a surefire crowd-pleaser. The tower is finally undone by the stinger on a bumblebee, but not before readers' vocabularies have been boosted by 16 ways to refer to buttocks. And if that's not an example of literature enriching our lives, what is? Ages 37. "(Jan.)" Copyright 2009 Publishers Weekly Used with permission.