Animals brag about their bottoms by Maki Saito
Bottoms are wonderful and all very different and this book celebrates the range of known and some unknown in a laugh out loud board book.
Easily held by younger hands, the images of the five bottoms on the cover will cause the first ripple of mirth. And the title will enthuse them further.
From stripey bottoms, to large bottoms, hairy bottoms to white bottoms, black bottoms and even some black and white bottoms, young children will get many laughs out of this book.
With the first page showing a rabbit, with its cute round bottom children will be eased into the world of bottoms through something they recognise easily. Then onto a large hippopotamus and an even larger elephant, taking up the whole page. Next we see the lovely stripes of a tiger and zebra, the wonderfully patterned bottom of the giraffe is next, with its tall neck striving to look at the readers, giving an impression of its height. Pandas, polar bears, a brown bear and a tapir come next. Following are the very bright bottoms of a monkey and a mandrill, then deer, sheep and llama with their soft fluffy bottoms. A rhinoceros shows a huge bottom and the hedgehog reminds us that his bottom is spiky.
A range of animals is given with the image of their bottom for young children to recognise the animal from a different perspective. Kids will love predicting the name of the animal, and finding out a little of its nether regions.
In a class lots of discussions will ensue, as all children love animals and this book shows many they may not have thought of when talking about bottoms. New words will be learnt as they brainstorm a whole range of words which also mean bottom. And who’d have thought there were so many different kinds of bottoms?
Kids will love looking all the bottoms, so seeing that everyone’s bottom is different, and theirs is just as different as every one else’s. The book encourages children to be accepting of their differences and those of others as well as getting a lot of laughs.
Maki Saito uses traditional Japanese art techniques along with collages to produce her images.
Themes: Animals, Bottoms, Self image, Humour.
Fran Knight