Chick and Brain: Smell My Foot!

A Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Book

From Newbery Honor winner Cece Bell comes an offbeat, pitch-perfect storybook for beginning readers that will have them in fits of giggles.

“Maybe your foot smells good.
Maybe your foot smells great.
But I will not smell your foot until you say PLEASE.”

Meet Chick and Brain. And their friend Spot. Chick likes to follow the rules. Brain might not be as smart as he looks. And Spot just wants to eat lunch. In a graphic reader loaded with verbal and visual humor, Cece Bell offers a comical primer on good manners gone awry. Simple, silly, and perfectly suited for its audience, this tale of Chick and Brain’s constant misunderstandings and miscommunications proves once again that Cece Bell is a master at meeting kids where they are.

Commended for Geisel Medal (Dr. Seuss) 2020

“In this first series entry, Bell flips the repetitive primer structure on its head and transforms it into a winning oddball comedy. With a limited vocabulary of around 120 words--exclusively presented through dialogue--the four-chapter story is a careful blend of verbal and visual humor. The comic-book format, with usually one to four panels per page, heightens the silly factor with well-placed punchlines. Bell's highly expressive watercolor and ink cartoon illustrations set characters against sparse backgrounds...Fragrant fun for first readers. --Kirkus Reviews”

In this first series entry, Bell flips the repetitive primer structure on its head and transforms it into a winning oddball comedy. With a limited vocabulary of around 120 words—exclusively presented through dialogue—the four-chapter story is a careful blend of verbal and visual humor. The comic-book format, with usually one to four panels per page, heightens the silly factor with well-placed punchlines. Bell's highly expressive watercolor and ink cartoon illustrations set characters against sparse backgrounds...Fragrant fun for first readers.
—Kirkus Reviews

The title says it all: this early reader comic by Newbery Honor author Bell features plenty of bonkers humor...Simple vocabulary packed with tension and humor keeps readers’ interest high.
—Publishers Weekly

It’s as silly as it sounds, just the way budding readers like it, and the word and sentence repetition are good for literacy development as well as remembering your manners. Boisterous art matches the situations with goofy figures in hyperbolic positions, and young readers will love seeing the danger coming before the characters do. A viable Elephant & Piggie alternative for slightly more advanced readers.
—Booklist

This easy reader’s panels and word bubbles provide comedic timing while parsing the text into digestible parts, which thoughtfully assists children new to both independent reading and the comics form. Bold outlines and exaggerated features in the watercolor and ink illustrations accentuate the playful absurdity of the narrative in this four-chapter comedy of errors.
—The Horn Book

Cece Bell is the author-illustrator of many books for young readers, including the Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Book Rabbit and Robot: The Sleepover and the Newbery Honor Book El Deafo. She is also the creator of the Sock Monkey picture books and Chuck and Woodchuck. Cece Bell lives in Virginia with her family.

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