15 Funny Gross-Out Books for Kids That Earn the Ewww

There are two kinds of adults.

Adults who understand why kids think gross things are funny.

And adults who have forgotten being eight.

Poop.

Boogers.

Underwear.

Farts.

Rotten teeth.

Something slimy that came out of an animal and probably should have stayed there.

Children did not invent any of that.

They're simply willing to discuss it.

Enthusiastically.

If you're new to Book Explorers, I'm Jungle Jimmy the Book Explorer, children's author, dad, and longtime performer for kids. My childlike sidekick is Readit the Book Worm, who heard the phrase gross-out books and volunteered before I finished the sentence.

"Do we get pictures?"

Unfortunately.

"Excellent."

After thirty years performing for kids, I've learned that gross humor has one enormous advantage.

You rarely need to explain the premise.

Tell a room there's a book about a farting dog, a kid who thinks his butt is broken, or a mole trying to identify who pooped on his head.

They're with you.

The harder question is whether there's a good book after the EWWW!

That's what this list is about.

Quick Picks

• Best Overall: Walter the Farting Dog
• Best Poop Mystery: The Story of the Little Mole Who Went in Search of Whodunit
• Best Butt Book: I Need a New Butt!
• Best Gross Science: Gross as a Snot Otter
• Best Gross-Out Competition: The Grossest Picture Book Ever
• Best Zoo Poop Book: What Do They Do with All That Poo?
• Best Underwear Book: Creepy Pair of Underwear!
• Best Interactive Gross-Out: Pat the Beastie
• Best Gross Book About Embarrassment: Who Wet My Pants?
• Best Celebration of Butts: The Butt Book
• Best Matter-of-Fact Classic: Everyone Poops
• Best Show-and-Tell Disaster: Rotten Teeth
• Best Bum Punchline: Piranhas Don't Eat Bananas
• Best Commitment to the Theme: The Great Big Poop Party
• Best Great Book With Just Enough Gross: The Princess and the Pony

1. Best Overall: Walter the Farting Dog

By William Kotzwinkle and Glenn Murray, illustrated by Audrey Colman

Walter farts.

A lot.

His family loves him.

They do not love the air around him.

Eventually the gas becomes such a problem that Walter's place in the family is in danger.

Then burglars arrive.

And Walter finally has exactly the wrong skill at exactly the right moment.

The publisher's own jacket calls it a number one New York Times bestseller with more than a million copies sold.

But sales aren't why Walter stays at the top for me.

The fart matters to the story.

It's the problem.

Then it's the solution.

Underneath all that gas is a book about a dog who wants to belong and a family discovering that Walter is more than the thing about him that drives everybody crazy.

Also, he defeats criminals with flatulence.

Let's not get too dignified about this.

Gross factor: Farts.

Why it earns the grossness: Story, character, payoff.

Belly Laugh Scale: 5/5, Laugh-Out-Loud Legend

Read the full Walter the Farting Dog review here.

Best for: Ages 4 to 9, dog kids, fart kids, and families who want their bathroom humor attached to an actual plot.

2. Best Poop Mystery: The Story of the Little Mole Who Went in Search of Whodunit

By Werner Holzwarth, illustrated by Wolf Erlbruch

Little Mole sticks his head out of his hole.

PLOP.

Something lands on his head.

We have a crime.

Little Mole starts questioning the animals.

Was it you?

Each animal demonstrates, in detail, why the poop on Mole's head could not possibly be theirs.

This may be the only detective story in which producing a fresh stool sample counts as an alibi.

Eventually the flies help Mole identify the culprit, and Mole gets his revenge.

That's why this ranks so high.

The poop isn't sitting there waiting for a laugh.

It's evidence.

The kid has a mystery to solve.

Different animals produce different poop.

And Mole is mad.

Goodreads has it at 4.25 from 5,440 ratings and 563 reviews, which is an unusually deep reader trail for this corner of children's books.

Apparently revenge poop has legs.

Poor choice of phrase.

Moving on.

Gross factor: Animal poop. Repeatedly.

Why it earns the grossness: Mystery, repetition, animal comparison, revenge.

Best for: Ages 3 and up, animal kids, mystery kids, and children who believe forensic science has been unnecessarily restrained.

3. Best Butt Book: I Need a New Butt!

By Dawn McMillan, illustrated by Ross Kinnaird

A boy discovers a crack in his butt.

This concerns him.

Deeply.

Obviously the butt is broken.

So he'll need another one.

What kind?

Robot butt?

Rocket butt?

Armor-plated butt?

Dawn McMillan and Ross Kinnaird take one misunderstanding and keep building on it. Dover, which publishes the series now, positions these as read-aloud stories for ages 6 to 10.

The original has built a big reader trail too. Goodreads shows 4.06 from 3,340 ratings and 534 reviews.

Why does it work?

Kid logic.

The crack is right there.

Cracked things are broken.

Therefore:

Broken butt.

Adults immediately know what's wrong with the reasoning.

Kids immediately know what's funny about it.

That's a sturdy joke.

Gross factor: Butts, butt cracks, fart speculation.

Why it earns the grossness: One ridiculous misunderstanding builds the whole imaginative adventure.

Best for: Roughly ages 5 to 10, rhyme lovers, butt-joke professionals, and kids who enjoy taking a silly idea much farther than any sensible person would.

4. Best Gross Science: Gross as a Snot Otter

By Jess Keating, illustrated by David DeGrand

Now we're getting educational.

Don't panic.

Jess Keating is a zoologist.

She brought projectile-vomiting gulls.

Snot Otter introduces seventeen animals whose disgusting qualities are the reason they survive.

Slime.

Vomit.

Poop.

Flatulence.

Lovely.

Knopf describes snot otters, gulls that vomit on command, fish that communicate through flatulence, and chipmunks that grow forests by pooping a trail of seeds wherever they go. It's 48 pages, aimed at ages 5 to 8, and it's part of the same World of Weird Animals series as Pink Is for Blobfish.

This is exactly what gross nonfiction should do.

The kid says:

"EW!"

Then:

"Wait. Why does it do that?"

Now we've got them.

The grossness isn't pasted onto the science.

It is the science.

Goodreads has it at 4.24 from 197 ratings, which is a small sample, so read that as encouraging rather than settled.

Gross factor: Snot, vomit, poop, farts, slime.

Why it earns the grossness: Every disgusting detail teaches something about an actual animal.

Best for: Ages 5 to 8, science kids, animal kids, fact collectors, and readers who enjoy making adults regret asking what they learned today.

5. Best Gross-Out Competition: The Grossest Picture Book Ever

By Derek Taylor Kent

Welcome to Gross.

That's the town.

People here don't merely tolerate disgusting things.

They compete.

Who can be grosser?

The residents keep escalating until they've produced the grossest day the town has ever had, and there's an environmental idea tucked underneath the mess.

This one is different from Walter.

The grossness is the main attraction.

Poop trucks.

Roaches.

Snot.

Disgusting food.

More grossness.

Then more.

Which means it won't be for every kid, and it definitely won't be for every adult. That's also why it scored where it did when we reviewed it. The escalation is the whole engine, and when you've seen the engine, you've seen the book.

But if your child hears "grossest picture book ever" and answers:

PROVE IT.

We have found the audience.

Gross factor: Yes.

Why it earns the grossness: Escalation, rhyme, ridiculous competition, environmental payoff.

Belly Laugh Scale: 3/5, Solid Chuckles

Read the full Grossest Picture Book Ever review here.

Best for: Roughly ages 4 to 8, committed gross-humor fans, read-aloud dares, and children with strong stomachs.

6. Best Zoo Poop Book: What Do They Do with All That Poo?

By Jane Kurtz, illustrated by Allison Black

A zoo has elephants.

Hippos.

Wombats.

Penguins.

Sloths.

Wonderful.

Now somebody has to clean up after them.

Jane Kurtz asks the question every zoo eventually has to answer:

What happens to all that poo?

Simon & Schuster confirms a 40-page nonfiction picture book for ages 4 to 8, covering cube-shaped wombat poop, scat that scientists study in labs, compost, and even elephant-poo paper.

And this one has a clever reading setup.

Younger kids follow the rhyming main text.

Older kids and adults dig into the smaller factual material running alongside it.

So the same book works at two depths, which is rare and genuinely useful.

Kirkus called it a "scatological success."

Goodreads has it at 4.31 from 733 ratings and 165 reviews.

That's a strong little pile of evidence.

Sorry.

Had to.

Gross factor: A zoo's worth of poop.

Why it earns the grossness: Real science and a genuinely interesting practical question.

Best for: Ages 4 to 8, zoo kids, science classrooms, and children who never considered that somebody has to deal with the elephant situation.

7. Best Underwear Book: Creepy Pair of Underwear!

By Aaron Reynolds, illustrated by Peter Brown

Jasper Rabbit wants big-rabbit underwear.

He gets glowing green underwear that refuses to stay gone.

This isn't particularly gross next to poop landing on a mole's head.

But come on.

Underwear.

Children have spoken.

What makes it better than a simple underwear joke is Peter Brown's spooky visual world and Aaron Reynolds's commitment to treating Jasper's problem seriously.

Jasper gets rid of the underwear.

It comes back.

Again.

And again.

Simon & Schuster lists the book at 48 pages for ages 4 to 8, with a Lexile of AD470L and an official Fountas & Pinnell level L. The AD means adult directed, which is the publisher telling you this is a read-aloud before it's a solo read.

The reviews keep landing on the same thing we noticed: it manages to be creepy and funny at the same time.

That's harder than yelling:

UNDERPANTS!

Although that also works surprisingly often.

Gross factor: Underwear.

Why it earns the grossness: Suspense, visual comedy, repetition, safe scares.

Belly Laugh Scale: 4/5, Big-Time Belly Laughs

Read the full Creepy Pair of Underwear! review here.

Best for: Ages 4 to 8, underwear comedians, Halloween reading, and kids who like a little shiver with the giggle.

8. Best Interactive Gross-Out: Pat the Beastie

By Henrik Drescher

Paul and Judy have a Beastie.

They are not kind to him.

Readers get invited to join in.

Pull Beastie's fur.

Jiggle his eyes.

Peek at him in the shower.

And, yes:

Wormy boogers.

The 1993 original was a wicked parody of Pat the Bunny, and the later Workman edition keeps the squishers, squeezers, squeakers and brightly colored wormy boogers intact.

Eventually Paul and Judy discover there may be consequences to tormenting a Beastie.

Large consequences.

With teeth.

This is one of the strangest books on the list.

I mean that affectionately.

Mostly.

Gross factor: Boogers, stinky feet, gross tactile gags, Beastie material.

Why it earns the grossness: The child physically participates, and the nasty behavior eventually has consequences.

Belly Laugh Scale: 4/5, Big-Time Belly Laughs

Read the full Pat the Beastie review here.

Best for: Kids who love interactive books, weird old picture books, monsters, boogers, and slightly wicked humor.

9. Best Gross Book About Embarrassment: Who Wet My Pants?

By Bob Shea, illustrated by Zachariah OHora

Reuben the bear has a wet spot on his pants.

Reuben would like to know who did this.

That's an interesting question, considering he is currently wearing the pants.

He starts blaming everybody.

His scout troop tries to tell him accidents happen.

Reuben is not ready for that information.

Little, Brown published the 40-page story for ages 4 to 8.

This isn't a potty-training book.

It's about embarrassment.

Reuben is humiliated, so he gets angry.

Then he tries to move the humiliation onto somebody else.

That's a real kid reaction wrapped around a pee joke.

Goodreads shows 3.73 from 1,788 ratings and 316 reviews, so adult response is more mixed than for several books higher on this list.

I still like what it's doing.

Gross moment.

Big feeling.

Bad reaction.

Friends who don't abandon you.

That's useful territory.

Gross factor: Pee accident.

Why it earns the grossness: Embarrassment, blame, compassion, forgiveness.

Best for: Ages 4 to 8, kids embarrassed by accidents, classroom conversations, and readers who like loud characters making obviously bad arguments.

10. Best Celebration of Butts: The Butt Book

By Artie Bennett, illustrated by Mike Lester

Tall butts.

Short butts.

Round butts.

Flat butts.

Animal butts.

Human butts.

Fish butts, which I had not previously considered.

This book has chosen a subject and remains admirably focused.

Bloomsbury lists Artie Bennett and Mike Lester on a 32-page rhyming book, and the reviews describe it as an energetic, good-natured tribute to backsides with silly verse and lively cartoons.

Goodreads has it at 3.97 from 350 ratings and 82 reviews.

There isn't a big plot here.

That's fine.

The pleasure is language, categories, pictures, and the fact that somebody has handed you an entire book in which saying butt is not only permitted but required.

For some children, this is freedom.

Gross factor: Butts.

Why it earns the grossness: Rhyming wordplay and visual variety.

Best for: Roughly ages 4 to 8, rhyme lovers, body-humor kids, and anyone currently in the developmental stage known as "BUTT!"

11. Best Matter-of-Fact Classic: Everyone Poops

By Taro Gomi

Elephants poop.

Mice poop.

People poop.

Everybody eats.

Therefore.

You see where we're going.

Taro Gomi's book is much less interested in being outrageous than most of this list.

That's exactly why it belongs on it.

The original English edition came out through Kane/Miller in 1993, translated from Gomi's Japanese book by Amanda Mayer Stinchecum, and the current Chronicle edition is aimed squarely at toddlers and potty-training families.

The joke is partly that nobody is whispering.

Animals poop differently.

People poop.

It's normal.

Next question.

Sometimes the least embarrassed book in the room is the funniest one.

Read the full Everyone Poops review here.

Gross factor: Poop.

Why it earns the grossness: Body science, normalization, potty-training usefulness.

Best for: Toddlers, preschoolers, potty training, and kids who have recently discovered that other creatures also have butts.

12. Best Show-and-Tell Disaster: Rotten Teeth

By Laura Simms, illustrated by David Catrow

Melissa Herman needs something interesting for show-and-tell.

Speaking in front of the class is not easy for her.

Her older brother has an idea.

Her father works in a dental office.

There is a bottle.

Inside the bottle:

Rotten teeth.

I believe we have solved show-and-tell.

Laura Simms wrote the 1998 story and David Catrow illustrated it. The teacher is appalled. The children are riveted. Catrow's pictures carry most of the chaos, which is the right division of labor.

And the author biography records a detail I have to respect:

Laura Simms really did bring a bottle of rotten teeth to school.

Goodreads puts the book at 3.88 from 162 ratings and 39 reviews.

The story isn't as tightly built as the books near the top. It's more of a setup than a plot.

But David Catrow plus rotten teeth plus show-and-tell?

I'm listening.

Gross factor: Actual rotten teeth.

Why it earns the grossness: School nerves, storytelling, visual chaos, and one spectacularly disgusting show-and-tell object.

Best for: Ages 4 to 8, school stories, shy kids, dental grossness, and teachers reconsidering open-ended show-and-tell policies.

13. Best Bum Punchline: Piranhas Don't Eat Bananas

By Aaron Blabey

Brian is a piranha.

Brian likes fruit.

His fellow piranhas think this is ridiculous.

Piranhas eat meat.

Feet, for example.

Aaron Blabey keeps bouncing fruit against increasingly carnivorous alternatives until the rhyme arrives exactly where a room full of children hopes it will.

Bums.

The piranhas, it turns out, still prefer bums over plums.

There it is.

The book earns its spot because the gross joke isn't random.

The rhyme has been steering toward it the whole time.

You can feel a room waiting for the word.

Pause.

Let them have it.

Goodreads has it at 4.18 from 2,043 ratings, which is the strongest reader response in the bottom half of this list by a wide margin.

Gross factor: Bums, and the ongoing possibility of piranhas eating people.

Why it earns the grossness: Rhyme, anticipation, performance, food silliness.

Best for: Ages 4 to 8, rhyming read-alouds, fish kids, and rooms that enjoy shouting the last word.

14. Best Commitment to the Theme: The Great Big Poop Party

By Samantha Berger, illustrated by Manny Galán

Julian gets to choose his birthday party theme.

Superheroes?

No.

Dinosaurs?

No.

Poop.

He wants a poop party.

I appreciate a child with a vision.

Henry Holt published the 40-page book in 2020 for ages 4 to 8, and Julian's family throws what the publisher calls the biggest, brownest poop party they can manage.

This sits low on my list because the gross theme is doing more work than the story is.

Reader response is modest and split. Goodreads shows 3.48 from 66 ratings and 18 reviews, which is a small enough sample that I'd treat it as a signal rather than a verdict.

Still.

Some kid is currently planning a birthday and needs to know this possibility exists.

I'm sorry.

Gross factor: Poop-themed everything.

Why it earns the grossness: Creativity and total commitment to one ridiculous party idea.

Best for: Ages 4 to 8, birthday books, craft-minded gross-out kids, and parents who should perhaps hide this article before party-planning season.

15. Best Great Book With Just Enough Gross: The Princess and the Pony

By Kate Beaton

This one barely qualifies.

That's intentional.

Princess Pinecone wants a mighty warrior horse.

She gets a tiny, round pony.

The pony is not fearsome.

The pony also farts.

It's already on our fart list, because librarians report that the pony's gas reliably takes a room apart during read-alouds.

But it earns the last spot here for a different reason.

It's the reminder that a funny gross-out moment doesn't have to swallow the whole book.

Sometimes one perfectly placed fart is enough.

Pinecone's real story is about expectations, toughness, and discovering that the thing that looks useless has its own peculiar advantage.

The fart is seasoning.

Very unfortunate seasoning.

Gross factor: One memorably gassy pony.

Why it earns the grossness: It doesn't depend on it.

Best for: Ages 4 to 8, princess kids, warrior kids, pony kids, and grown-ups who want a strong picture book with a side order of gas.

How Gross Is Too Gross?

Depends on the kid.

That's the boring answer.

It's also the useful one.

Some four-year-olds think poop is the greatest contribution language has ever made.

Another child will look at The Grossest Picture Book Ever and decide civilization has gone too far.

Neither reaction is wrong.

Gross humor works because it plays with the things we're usually expected to keep private, clean up, cover up, flush away, or not discuss at dinner.

Books make those things safe to examine.

Sometimes they're pure nonsense.

Sometimes they're science.

Sometimes they're embarrassment.

And sometimes they're the thing that makes a child who didn't want a book suddenly say:

"Wait. What's that one about?"

That matters.

Gross Books Are Sneakier Than They Look

Look at the list again.

Walter the Farting Dog is about belonging.

Who Wet My Pants? is about embarrassment.

Gross as a Snot Otter is zoology.

What Do They Do with All That Poo? is waste management.

Everyone Poops makes bodies less mysterious.

Rotten Teeth turns show-and-tell into a story about a shy kid finding something worth saying.

Pat the Beastie is basically:

Maybe stop tormenting the monster before he eats you.

Useful.

And The Story of the Little Mole is.

"Revenge."

Thank you, Readit.

I was hoping for something more educational.

"He investigates poop."

Also true.

The point is that gross humor and substance aren't enemies.

You can have both.

What Didn't Make the List

A few books from our fart list stay over there.

Freddie the Farting Snowman is fun if your kid wants a catalog of silly fart types, but this broader list has stronger story and nonfiction options.

Almost Everybody Farts works nicely as a funny everybody-does-it book, but Everyone Poops fills that body-normalization role more strongly here.

Gomer the Gassy Goat is a good performance pick, but once we widened past gas, books like I Need a New Butt! and The Story of the Little Mole brought more variety.

I also considered making this list wall-to-wall poop.

Readit supported the proposal.

"Strongly."

Denied.

If Your Kid Likes Gross Books, Don't Panic

There's a temptation among adults to treat gross humor as something kids need to graduate from.

I wouldn't worry about it.

The better question is:

Are they reading?

Are they laughing?

Are they curious?

Did the poop book lead to animal science?

Did the farting dog lead to another story?

Did the kid who said books were boring just ask for the butt book again?

We can work with that. It's the same argument I make about books for reluctant readers, and gross-out books are one of the most reliable ways in.

A child's first doorway into reading pleasure does not need stained glass.

Sometimes there's a toilet on it.

Open the door.

Jungle Jimmy's Quick Picks

If you want one great gross story, get Walter the Farting Dog.

For poop, The Story of the Little Mole Who Went in Search of Whodunit.

For butts, I Need a New Butt!

For science, Gross as a Snot Otter.

For zoo science, What Do They Do with All That Poo?

For underwear, Creepy Pair of Underwear!

For interactive weirdness, Pat the Beastie.

For a younger child learning that bodies are bodies, Everyone Poops.

And for the child who specifically requests maximum disgustingness?

The Grossest Picture Book Ever.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

If you want farts specifically rather than the whole gross shelf, that's a separate list of sixteen. And if you want funny without the smell, start with the hilarious picture books kids actually laugh at.

Final Explorer Verdict

Gross-out books aren't one thing.

That's what surprised me putting this shelf together.

Some are joke machines.

Some are mysteries.

Some are science books wearing a fake mustache.

Some are about embarrassment or acceptance.

And one contains a farting pony, because apparently the universe is generous.

The books I like best give the gross thing a job.

Walter's fart saves the day.

Mole's poop launches an investigation.

The snot otter's slime keeps an animal alive.

Reuben's wet pants expose what embarrassment can make somebody do.

The grossness gets attention.

Then the book has somewhere to go.

Readit?

"Yeah?"

What did you learn?

"Wombat poop is cubes."

Anything else?

"Don't stand under a mole."

That's not.

Actually, fine.

Keep exploring, Story Seekers!

Jungle Jimmy & Readit