Big Girl Panties

by Fran Manushkin, Valeria Petrone (Illustrator)

Overview

Big Girl Panties! features a light, positive approach to motivate toddlers to become toilet trained. What could be more rewarding for a little girl than wearing big girl panties, just like mommy? Adult caregivers and toddlers alike will love the snappy, rhyming text and colorful, hip illustrations. Valeria Petrone's stylized artwork ensures that this commercial yet heartwarming book will have a special place on little girls' favorite bookshelves. Soon they'll all be saying, "Bye, bye diapers!"

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307931528
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	09/11/2012
Pages:	24
Sales rank:	340,564
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	AD240L (what's this?)
Age Range:	3 Months to 3 Years

About the Author

FRAN MANUSHKIN has written over 50 books for children, including The Tushy Book; The Belly Book; Baby, Come Out (translated into 8 languages), Charlotte Zolotow Honor Book How Mama Brought the Spring, and the popular Katie Woo series. She lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

PreS—A diaper being thrown into the trash kicks off this upbeat celebration of panties. A pigtailed protagonist skips across the pages. She proclaims the myriad choices that come with being a big girl, from the pictured days of the week set to a pair of frilly pink "Princess panties that sparkle and shine." The bright illustrations, set against a slate blue background, convey the youngster's excitement with a flurry of movement and many proud smiles. She takes a break from dancing and play to inform a baby sibling and a stuffed crocodile that they cannot wear panties, though mommies and grandmas can. At the close of the book the child addresses the listener, who presumably is also in on the fun and thus "a big girl, too!" This will make fine reading for newly minted big girls.—Laura Butler, Mount Laurel Library, NJ

School Library Journal

A festive celebration of a young girl's transition to underwear. "Bye-bye, diapers! / I wear panties! // Happy panties! Snappy panties! / Panties! Panties! Hip hooray! Panties for every single day," says the dark-haired Caucasian heroine, who cavorts through the pages modeling undergarments with colorful prints and patterns. Midway through the book, she claims her "big girl" status and playfully scolds a baby (likely a sibling) and a toy crocodile for even considering wearing panties. On the last page, she calls the panty-wearing reader "a big girl, too!" The flat, pleasing, retro illustrations on slate blue backgrounds echo the text's tone nicely. While this book isn't going to convince girls to make the change without other interventions, parents will appreciate the rhyming, bouncing text's exuberant cheerleading. Here's hoping the boy's version of this brief tale (pun-intended) is not too far away. This is one of a handful of diaper-to-underwear books that is fun to read more than once. (Board book. 18 mos.-4)

Kirkus Reviews