Review by Booklist Review
Ages 5^-8. The poetry doesn't quite scan, but that's more than balanced by Arnold's unusual topic and his hilarious illustrations. A pop-eyed youngster is having a hard time. He seems to be falling apart. After losing a few hairs, he thinks he's going bald; his belly button lint is his stuffing coming out; "a chunk of something gray and wet" from his nose is none other than a piece of his brain; and a loose tooth puts him into shock. "Quite soon I'll be in pieces in / A pile without a shape. / Thank goodness Dad keeps lots and lots / And lots of masking tape." The gross factor is a key ingredient here, with Arnold exploiting it nicely in bold, comical illustrations that catch the full-blown anxieties of the imaginative narrator. When Mom and Dad intervene, little boy and audience alike breathe a sigh of relief. A zany, ultimately reassuring take on something that may indeed be a child's bugaboo. --Stephanie Zvirin
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this humorously askew look at the body, belly-button lint leads a five-year-old boy to believe he's falling apart. "I stared at it, amazed, and wondered,/ What's this all about?/ But then I understood. It was/ My stuffing coming out!" Each discovery increases the narrator's anxiety. Strands of hair in a comb arouse thoughts of premature baldness; "a chunk of something gray and wet," fallen from a nostril, is identified as "a little piece of brain." (Attempting to find answers, the young hypochondriac pores over a stack of books on gray matter, including a "Book of Marbles" for those losing theirs.) The boy's parents insist that nose goo and flaky skin are normal, but their solemn reassurance is met with a gross punch line: "Then tell me, what's this yellow stuff I got out of my ear?" Whimsical cartoons, in warm watercolor hues and texturized with squiggles of colored pencil that resemble the boy's decreasing hairs, show the narrator in the foreground and his worst fantasies in the background. The subject matter, despite its potential to be disgusting, is treated as funny but commonplace. Trying to make sense of one's "parts" is a common childhood concern, and Arnold's (No More Water in the Tub!) comical hyperbole will set children at ease about fears they might hesitate to share. Ages 3-8. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Horn Book Review
A pop-eyed preschooler who notices a few strands of hair in his comb, some peeling skin, and a loose tooth panics that 'the glue that holds our parts together isn't holding me!!!' Parentally reassured that his body oddities are normal, the boy replies 'Then tell me, what's this yellow stuff I got out of my ear?' Colored pencil and watercolors energetically convey the rhyming, comic gross-out. From HORN BOOK 1997, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Arnold (The Simple People, 1992, etc.) cashes in by grossing out the picture-book set in this story in rhyme, which kids with rough-and-ready sensibilities will relish and fastidious adults will shun, for the same reasons. The goggle-eyed narrator has noticed that he loses hairs, his skin peels, and a tooth is loose, not to mention his discoveries of belly-button lint and nose yuck. He comes to the alarming conclusion that he's going bald and toothless, shedding his skin, losing his stuffing, and his brains are leaking out his nose. His parents reassure him that all these lost parts renew themselves. His response: ``That's really good to hear! Then tell me, what's this yellow stuff I got out of my ear?'' Stupid, silly, and base, in equal measure, this has watercolor illustrations that are textured with colored-pencil curlicues in such a way that they look hairy--like the tangles that clog a shower drain. (Book-of-the- Month Club) (Picture book. 4-8)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
