Skip to the Loo, My Darling! A Potty Book

Riffing on the song “Skip to My Lou,” Lloyd-Jones (The House That’s Your Home) and Jeram (Guess How Much I Love You) suggest that using the bathroom is an event worth celebrating, as various creatures skip and prance their way to a “potty party.” A rabbit gets things started, but “Bunny’s not the only one/ skipping to the loo./ Look who else wants their potty!/ Quite a few...” The following pages are nothing short of a potty parade as kangaroos, a dodo, a frog on a scooter, a tutu-wearing elephant, an iguanalike monster, and others romp through the woods with one thing on their minds. Jeram’s characteristically delicate ink-and-watercolor artwork adds gentle humor throughout (at one point, a mouse unspools a roll of toilet paper like it’s a red carpet), and eventually the animals set up their chamber pots and training toilets in a clearing. An embedded mirror invites readers to join in: “Wait! Isn’t someone missing? I wonder... is it you?” Leaving the mechanics of using the potty to concerned adults, Lloyd-Jones’s singsong rhymes instead establish an “everyone’s doing it” aura of excitement as a means of encouragement. Ages 2–5. (Mar.)