Down the Tubes: On Top of the Potty And Other Get-Up-And-Go Songs by Alan Katz and David Catrow

"If You Gotta Go" (To the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It....")

If you gotta go do poopy,
please don't wait!
If ya gotta go do poopy,
potty's great!
Uncle Sidney and Aunt Dotty
always, always use the potty.
Although not at the same time.
They alternate!

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Katz' and Catrow's On Top of the Potty: And Other Get-Up-and-Go Songs can make what is an anxiety-provoking period into--well, actually, a sorta fun sing-along. After all, if anything in parenting needs a bit of levity, it's potty practice time!

Author Alan Katz and illustrator David Catrow ventured into the "silly-dilly song" market with their 2007 hit, Take Me Out of the Bathtub and Other Silly Dilly Songs, and have now turned their considerable writing and illustrative skills to that mountaintop experience of toddlerhood, toilet training. Be forewarned: potty training is not for sissies, and this genuinely funny collection of plumbing-related poesy is not for the faint hearted (or queasy stomached) either. A few of Katz' rhymes are, shall we say, a bit indelicate, as befits his subject, but others have possibilities even for, er, public performances. Here, for example, (to the tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat") is a verse from his hymn to post-potty handwashing that all nursery school scholars should sing at bathroom break time:

Scrub, scrub, scrub your hands
each time that you pee.
That's a big kid thing to do
when you go potty.

After all, as silly as singing toilet-time tunes may be, aesthetically it beats the alternative, and, as the potty poet puts it:

If you gotta go do pee-pee--
Potty chair!!
If you gotta go do pee-pee--
Potty's there!!
You'll get really good with practice,
and the happy, happy fact is
you can trade your diapers in for underwear!

Other silly-dilly collaborations from Katz and Catrow are I'm Still Here in the Bathtub: Brand New Silly Dilly Songs, Are You Quite Polite?: Silly Dilly Manners Songs, Smelly Locker: Silly Dilly School Songs, Where Did They Hide My Presents?: Silly Dilly Christmas Songs, Going, Going, Gone!: And Other Silly Dilly Sports Songs.