Stephanie Blake (1) (1968–)

Who will like Poo Bum? If your child — or you — think fart jokes are hilarious, then this book is perfect. More serious children and adults will probably find Poo Bum predictable and off-putting. Which is too bad, as author Stéphanie Blake’s illustrations are quite clever in a Matt Groening kind of way.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley, Myrick Marketing & Media, LLC, and Gecko Press in exchange for an honest review.

I really liked the book “I Don’t Want to Go to School!” by Stephanie Blake. The first reason I liked the book is because of the main character, Simon the rabbit. Simon starts out the book wearing a superhero costume, and throughout the book is stubborn, silly, shy, frustrated, and excited. The fact that he displays so many different traits and emotions makes him a very likeable and relatable character, even though he is a rabbit. Secondly, the book repeats the line, “Simon answered, show more ‘No way!’” on nearly every page. Repetition is fun for students, and beneficial for emerging readers. The last thing that I enjoyed about the book was the formatting of some of the pages. A few pages from the book were set up in a comic book style with boxes that include many different pictures from a sequence of events. This is a refreshing change of pace, and would likely capture a child’s interest. The main idea of the book is to ease children’s anxiety for the first day of school. show less

This book is about two friends who trade toys permanently. The main character has second thoughts when the toy he traded for breaks in half! He tricks his friend into trading back by telling him he left something in his old toy. The bunny traded back for his old toy, looks inside and finds a booger!! I thought it was so gross and funny. I know my son would laugh and laugh at this book.

Two six or seven year olds read this to me today (in German). They are both poor readers for their age. They both read the whole book and enjoyed it. A delightful story both for children and adults.