Independent Reading Level: Pre-K- 3rd Grade
Honors/Awards: N/A

There is an entire series of these books, by far I think this is my favorite. The rhymes to the songs are easier to get (mostly) and they don’t make the tongue fall all over itself as bad. Plus I am a sucker for a Catrow illustration. ( )

Smelly Locker by Alan Katz
I had mixed feelings about this book after reading it. I liked how this was a different book than regular children’s books, this book had different songs on each page. Also when singing the songs, there were parentheses to tell us the tune of the song. This book had a pattern on each page, most of the songs had a rhyme to them and it was repeated. This was an engaging book because in order to read the book you get to sing a song. This was neither in first person or third person point of view. This book didn’t have characters, but it did have a picture of what would be a character on each page. The illustration grabbed the reader’s attention. The illustrator made the children in the book look funny but realistic at the same time. The illustrations match the written text. But I didn’t like how the book was kind of confusing because each page was talking about something different. Also if you didn’t know a certain tune then it was hard to sing the song. I feel as though this had nonfiction traits but was a fiction story. ( )

Smelly Locker is an Alan Katz (author of Take Me Out of the Bathtub) poetry creation. The poems are catchy and highly satirical in a bathroom humour sort of way. The illustrations (created by David Catrow) match the tone of the poems well, with numerous 'gross-out' details vividly colourized. ( )

A really fun and silly book to read. Would be great to show students that poetry can be silly and meaningful.