How to Pee Your Pants: The Right Way
by Rachel Michelle Wilson; illus. by the author
Primary    Feiwel    32 pp.
10/24    9781250910172    $18.99
e-book ed.  9781250405449    $11.99

In this nonjudgmental, laid-back, and very funny picture book, a bespectacled young penguin demonstrates how to cope with a potty accident at school: “It can happen when you are sleeping. It can happen in class. It can happen when you are sleeping in class.” From possible causes (e.g., not wanting to interrupt a lesson, drinking too much lemonade at lunch) to avoidance techniques (“the grab-and-hold…obvious but effective”) to coping skills after the fact (cause a distraction, find clean clothes), the text is unfailingly reassuring: “We’ve all been there.” The art, in a soothing limited palette, has a subdued, retro flair. There are funny visual gags (origami undies) and pee-pee puns (book titles glimpsed in the art include Urine Control and Pee Prepared), but the humor is never at anyone’s expense. And best of all, the culminating messages of problem-solving, helpfulness, and, especially, empathy are transferable to other would-be embarrassing situations—peelieve it or not.

From the ">January/February 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.