🐝 A pun-tastic reminder that in nature nothing, not even waste, goes to waste. 💩 ​

Kicking off with bees—which don’t actually pee, but do drop grains of “frass that feeds the grass!”—Sweeney explains both in rhyme and in more detail in a closing wrap-up how waste produced by creatures from elephants and whales on down to bats and sand-pooping parrotfish is consumed and recycled to leave the world “poo-llution free.”

As a particularly neat case in point, she describes how whales make a “poop loop,” beginning with a “plume” that nourishes phytoplankton that in turn sustains an entire oceanic food chain. For crowd-pleasing extras, she urges readers to join both a creature chorus and a racially diverse trio of child observers from Rutland’s bright cartoon illustrations in belting out a deliciously wince-worthy “Poo Rap” and then to match no fewer than 11 cognates for poop, from guano to spraints, with the animals that are associated with them. In a final note she invites caregivers to join the fun by offering discussion points to consider while sharing both the book and nature walks.
 

A high-spirited info-dump, featuring some particularly choice new vocabulary for young nature lovers. (reading list, answer key) (Informational picture book. 6-8)

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