How to engage young readers? You can mention something slightly inappropriate like a butt. You can make age-appropriate jokes that are a little bit rude. You can involve pictures of animals, early elementary-age readers love animals. You can ask questions. Who doesn’t like to answer a question? It’s a reflexive action like catching a ball when one is thrown to you. Butt or Face? Revenge of the Butts, the target demographic might also call it Butt or Face #2 and are also lining up to see Butt or Face #3, as long as they get to say the name of the book aloud in class.
Another great way to engage young readers is to package it in a way that’s familiar to Nat Geo Kids. That publisher and its line of nonfiction reference or entertainment books are the 500-pound gorilla in keeping kids entertained while learning something. The combination of real photographs and snappy, informational text presented in blurbs always delivers to readers ages seven and up.
Butt or Face? Revenge of the Butts accomplishes the same thing. Some of the text rhymes in ways that will keep those young ages grinning, even though they know they don’t need rhyming words to keep them entertained. There are also lots of animal puns and mom-approved synonyms for butt like hissss-terical, patootie, derriere and others. Kids (and adults) will meet all sorts of odd animals, most of whom they don’t know, like the spicebush swallowtail caterpillar and more. Its square pages brim with photographs from corner-to-corner and the combination of all of this is a nature stacked case against not wanting to read it.
Try to eat one Pringles potato chip, only one. This is the Cat Video Test, sometimes called the Potato Chip Quiz that we speak of. If you’re unable to engage in just one, then the product is doing its job. Young readers will not be able to look at just one page in Butt or Face 2. They’ll look at a photograph that sets the animal up, think they know which end of the living thing they’re observing and get it wrong. Then they’ll look at the photograph of the entire animal, find its bottom, butt, patootie, rear-rump or posterior and compare it to its face. By now they’re circling the drain of STEM-factoid nirvana and decide to read about the critter in question.
You get the idea. Butt or Face? Revenge of the Butts is fun. It’s effortless, nature-based facts and photographs will make kids laugh, learn something and perhaps make them curious to read more about the exotic animals these ages yearn for. Just when you think the shtick is done, the last two pages of the book has a map of the world showing where the animals rest their butts, and lists what goes in their faces. It sets up a joke that’s just outside the boundaries of school-age appropriateness with feces that comes out of their butt for Butt or Face #3, but that’s a pun for another day. Wait, Butt or Face? Volume 3: Super Gross Butts comes out in September 2025, but it probably won’t have that joke in there.
Butt or Face? Revenge of the Butts is by Kari Lavelle and is available on Sourcebooks Explore.
There are affiliate links in this post.
Facebook
Twitter
Flickr
GooglePlus
Youtube