How to Potty Train Your Porcupine

by Tom Toro

Overview

This laugh-out-loud picture book is a hilarious take on potty training by a talented New Yorker cartoonist — perfect for fans of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and How to Babysit a Grandma.



Two children bring home a pet porcupine, but they can only keep her if she's house-trained! After a whirlwind of increasingly zany approaches, the kids learn that sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to ask nicely. With Tom's wit and dynamic artwork, this delightful story about learning to pee will bring joy and heart to young readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316495394
Publisher:	Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	05/12/2020
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	10.10(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.20(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Tom Toro is a cartoonist and writer. Over 200 of his cartoons have been published in the New Yorker since 2010, as well as the New York Times, Playboy, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. Tom's essays have appeared in The New Yorker Cartoon Encyclopedia, and his short stories have appeared in the New Haven Review,Slush Pile, and Litro. Tom attended NYU graduate film school, where he cocreated films that played at Sundance, Tribeca, and Cannes. Tom has been interviewed and profiled by NPR, the Huffington Post, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, kid, and cat.

Editorial Reviews

2020-02-09
The long and short of a pointy potty predicament, from a New Yorker cartoonist and debut picture-book creator.

Readers undisturbed by the image of bright yellow urine dripping from porcupine quills will probably be the best possible audience for this entry into the potty-training genre. A pair of children (they are biracial, with a black dad and white mom) take it upon themselves to housetrain their new porcupine pet. She can’t be diapered, the cat box is a nonstarter, the backyard is too public, and spreading newspapers is a bust. Could potty training be the answer? Alas, this porcupine is reticent to even attempt the job, thus leading the children to try every conceivable method of trickery and persuasion. In the end, the easiest solution (asking nicely) turns out to be the best—and the most anticlimactic. Title notwithstanding, this isn’t a guide for teaching tots the ins and outs of toilet training but rather a humorous descent into absurdity with a scatological edge best appreciated by those who have fairly recently conquered the potty or who are watching younger siblings master the feat. The porcupine herself is charming, and Toro’s visual gags and silly watercolors mostly make up for the flat ending. At best, droll, at worst, kind of gross.

Unless you’ve got a porcupine who needs it, hand this to the trained and not the trainees. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews