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Chicken Butt! and Chicken Butt’s Back by Erica Perl

Review by Chris Singer

About the author:

Erica Perl is a full-time writer and part-time chicken. She is the author of Ninety-Three In My Family, which School Library Journal called a “Comic Masterpiece,” and Chicken Bedtime Is Really Early, which received a starred review from BookList. She lives with her family in Washington, D.C. Visit her at www.ericaperl.com.

About the illustrator:

Henry Cole grew up on a farm in Virginia with a coop full of mischievous chickens. He now lives in Florida with two peacocks. You can find him online at www.henrycole.net.

About the books:

CHICKEN BUTT! — When a little boy successfully uses “fowl” play and ridiculous rhymes to get his distracted dad’s attention, he gets so excited he keeps going and going. Dad wants to stop the silliness, but he’s no match for . . . CHICKEN BUTT! A laugh-out-loud, read-it-again delight for the whole family.

CHICKEN BUTT’S BACK! — In this cheeky (sorry!) sequel to the wildly fun Chicken Butt!, the young jokester and his chicken muse are back, but this time they’re trying to trick Mom. She thinks she has caught on to the gag, but as she distractedly does the grocery shopping, she falls victim to a flurry of jokes using homonyms and homophones—words such as “dear” and “deer,” and “which” and “witch.” Wordplay has never been so much fun.

Like Chicken Butt!, this story encourages children to participate in a call-and-response reading format that reinforces their reading skills.

My take on the books:

If your kids like to laugh and be silly, you may need to introduce them to these fun reads from Erica Perl. I love how the dialogue is written in different fonts and colors – the parents in a black font and the son’s in bold red. Both parents in the stories are trying to have some peace and concentrate on the task at hand (Dad’s reading his newspaper while Mom’s going grocery shopping). The illustrations are wildly fun and rambunctious as well, and both parents and children will have a blast reading this together out loud.

Teachers as well can have a great time during classroom story time since both books encourage children to do a call-and-response (as mentioned above). You can even further extend the book by having children write their own versions or even act out scenes.

All in all, both