Review by Frank Plowright

There’s an old adage about how you can’t judge a book by its cover. Well, add this one to the list as despite a subject being right there in massive letters, it’s a topic that’s swerved around rather than given a comprehensive airing. Pedro is obsessed with poo, so when his teacher assigns the class the task of keeping a diary for a year, it seems the ideal topic. Well, to him.

On the face of it Jim Smith takes much the same approach he does with his Barry Loser graphic novels, except the drawing is even simpler, with Pedro a massive head with a big mouth on a stumpy body. However, there are other differences, and it means that while fun, My Big Fat Smelly Poo Diary isn’t quite up there with Smith’s best.

The biggest minus is for half the book Pedro is being a whiny, annoying kid lacking Barry’s fundamentally decent personality and Smith investing his escapades with surreal aspects. While poo features, it’s often just in passing. The four stories start with Pedro losing a tooth and how he and his mates spend the Tooth Fairy’s money, which is followed by a trip to the seaside. There’s a brief detour back on subject with attempts to photograph the mysterious Poo Lady, before the arrival of a new kid at school, someone Pedro hates on sight. It’s a plot Smith’s used before in Barry Loser, but takes a different turn here, with poo hastened back onto the agenda. Someone’s left a floater in the toilet without flushing, and Pedro’s determined to get to the bottom of it.

This is more like it, with plot and counterplot and a mystery to be solved leading to a clever solution tying into earlier events. Smith’s back on form here, with one ridiculous situation after another raising the entire book. Plus extra points for an extended investigation of an unsavoury subject. This is what we want, and it’s great.

Smith closes off with his own poo diary spanning the years in six panels. Ugh!