THE BELLY BOOK Illustrated by Dan Yaccarino Format: Hardcover, 32pp. ISBN: 0312649584 Publisher: Feiwel & Friends Pub. Date: November  2011

Reviews

“Bellies, we love you smooth or hairy./ On the mountains! On the prairie!” With snappy rhymes, bright bold graphics, and a winning sense of playfulness, Manushkin follows The Tushy Book with a salute to the body’s middle ground, this time teaming up with Yaccarino. With a saturated palette, streamlined verve, and visual winks reminiscent of midcentury poster art, Yaccarino makes every page pop. He’s especially good at creating images with a mirroring element: one standout spread shows identical curly-headed twins reaching across the page to tickle each other’s bellies with feathers.
Publishers Weekly

A meditation on the middle for beginning readers and younger listeners supports some appealingly merry illustrations.
Manushkin’s rhyming text is an invitation to a general celebration of abdomens—readers' own or other peoples', and beasts and birds. Dan Yaccarino adds his clever, energetic, lighthearted illustration. Manushkin humorously points out that belly-button lint is kind of mysterious (“Where it comes from, no one knows!”). The playful full-page gouaches zip nimbly from thought to thought and invest the whole with a generous dollop of whimsy. Delightful art adds panache to this ode to a body part.
Kirkus Reviews