IN THE humiliating and soul-destroying process of trying to find a publisher for a children's book I had written, I was informed by an editor that I would have to purge all naughty/potty humor from my manuscript before she would consider making an offer. Whatever Happened to All the Fun in the World? is the story of two modern-day Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn-like characters, named Riff and Raff, who set out to find, and bring back, all the fun that has mysteriously disappeared from the world. The editor liked the premise but objected to Riff and Raff enlisting the help of a clown named BeanO, who can fart laughing gas when he senses danger. When the three characters are being pursued by scary monsters, BeanO implores Riff and Raff to "plug your noses and pull my finger." The fragrant big bang that ensues leaves the monsters gasping for breath and rolling on the ground in hysterics, allowing our heroes to escape.

The prudish editor did not think BeanO was funny. "It would be inappropriate to include references to bathroom humor, bodily emissions," she opined. "Parents, teachers, and librarians (the people who buy children's books) will not stand for this. This is a commercial reality, a market reality, and policy for most publishers."

Being wholly ignorant of children's literature I accepted the editor at her word, gave up my fantasy of becoming fabulously wealthy by writing sweet, corny, humorous, moral stories for kids, and went back to churning out the vile filth and inane socio-political diatribes that are my forte. But I couldn't let it go. I simply could not believe that in this age of South Park, Beavis and Butt-Head, and the Internet that my sure-to-be-a-bestseller would never be published because it had a fart joke in it. Could it be that the same cabal of Sunday school teachers, churlish spinsters, and Puritans who seemed to control the kids'-lit industry a million years ago when I was a kid had somehow managed to keep the giggling, gassy heathens outside the castle walls? Nah.

In fact, after spending a few days researching in the kids' section of the library, where I was constantly monitored by bewildered security staff and nervous librarians, I am both happy, and relieved, to report that there has been a veritable explosion of naughty/potty humor in kids' books recently.

If publishers were hesitant to run the risk of offending adults who actually find The Family Circus comic strip funny, the massive success of the Captain Underpants series proved to all the power of poo. Wherever I went, the first name that rolled off the tongues of those in the know when I asked about naughty/potty humor was Captain Underpants.

The principal protagonists in the Captain Underpants series are two fourth-grade pranksters named George and Harold ("Harold is the one with the bad haircut"). And if two fourth-graders are the primary protagonists, you gotta know that the antagonist is going to be an evil principal. "Mr. Krupp was the meanest, sourest old principal in the whole history of Jerome Horwitz Elementary School. He hated laughter, he hated singing. He hated the sounds of children playing at recess. In fact, he hated children altogether." And guess what Mr. Krupp hates more than anything. That's right, "Mr. Krupp hated George and Harold. He hated their pranks and their wisecracks. He hated their silly attitudes and their constant giggling."

George and Harold have just finished forcing the school's football team to forfeit the proverbial "big game" by pulling off their greatest-ever series of pranks, when the you-know-what hits the fan for our dynamic duo. The two are gloating over their mischievous tour de force--black pepper in the cheerleaders' pom-poms, bubble bath in the band's instruments, itching cream in the team's deep-heating muscle rub, and helium in the game ball--when they are summoned to Principal Krupp's office. "Don't worry," George assures Harold, "they can't prove anything." Wrong!

Krupp has caught the whole thing on videotape, which he threatens to turn over to the football team unless George and Harold become completely subservient. This, of course, is a fate that is totally anathema to the anarchistic little hellions, who desperately seek a way to extricate themselves from Krupp's cruel experiment in forced behavior modification. After six weeks of painful angelic behavior, salvation arrives in the form of a 3-D hypno ring and suddenly the tables are turned on the villainous principal. Krupp is hypnotized, forced to hand over the incriminating videotape, and then transformed into Captain Underpants, the world's greatest superhero, who fights crime with wedgie power while wearing nothing but his underwear.

Dav Pilkey, who makes his home in Seattle, is the creator of Captain Underpants. Pilkey was a class clown who often found himself banished to the hallways of his school where he whiled away the hours making comic books. Unimaginative teachers warned Pilkey that his tomfoolery would get him nowhere in life, but Dav was undeterred and is now laughing all the way to the bank with more than a million copies of his four Captain Underpants "epic novels" sold.

Captain Underpants has vanquished such villains as Dr. Diaper and the Pied Pooper of Piqua, Professor Pippy P. Poopypants (who has a perilous plot and is an alumni of Chunky Q. Boogernose University), and saved the world from being taken over by the Talking Toilets, the Incredibly Naughty Cafeteria Ladies from Outer Space, and the Evil Lunchroom Zombie Nerds.

Perhaps buoyed by the phenomenal success of its Captain Underpants gambit, Scholastic has just let loose a gem called The Giggler Treatment. While it is the author's first children's title, Roddy Doyle is no stranger to the literary world. Doyle is another in the long line of great Irish storytellers; in 1993, he won the Booker Prize for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. He also penned the NY Times bestseller A Star Called Henry and wrote The Commitments, which was made into the 1991 hit movie of the same name.

The Gigglers' raison d'ĂŞtre is to protect children from, and exact revenge upon, adults who are not fair to them. And if you haven't guessed that the revenge involves poo, you have, as they say in Ireland, completely lost the plot. Any time an adult treats a child unjustly, the Gigglers call upon one of their dog friends to render forth a big pile of turd, which they pick up with their specially designed mechanical poo claw, place into a plastic bag, and strategically plop down in a spot where the guilty adult is sure to step in it.

The dog that is called upon to deliver the goods is named Rover and it must be said that Rover has outdone himself this time: "It was huge. It was a big pile of wet, fresh dog poo. It was probably the biggest pile of poo in the world." Unfortunately, while Rover is producing above and beyond the call of doo-ty, the Gigglers have made a terrible error of judgment. Mr. Mack, the target for the Giggler treatment, has been falsely convicted by an all-too-hasty jury of Gigglers and is just about to have injustice dispensed upon him when the mistake is discovered. And the race is on as Rover, the Gigglers, and Mr. Mack's wife and children frantically scramble across town to head him off at the pass.

Obviously, The Giggler Treatment is meant to convey a message to the parents who actually buy kids' books, but there's some very risqué content in the book as well. While the scatological theme of the book is likely just about enough to give your old Aunt Milly palpitations, she'd probably have a full-blown jammer if she read the jacket blurb and a strange warning in the first chapter. The jacket blurb explains that "adults who are mean to children--who tell them something tastes like chicken when it doesn't," get the Giggler treatment. Well, at least they stopped short of saying that the thing that doesn't really taste like chicken doesn't really smell like fish either.

The warning in the first chapter is even more bizarre. Doyle is attempting to translate Irish terminology for American readers by pointing out that what Americans call cookies are referred to as biscuits on the Emerald Isle (Mr. Mack is employed as a biscuit tester). "Think about it," Doyle writes in the damn-near inexplicable warning. "You might be in Ireland some day, and you might run into a shop (that's a 'store') wanting to shout, 'Quick! Quick! My cookie is bleeding. Give me a Band-Aid!'" Either Doyle is painfully unaware of the fact that "cookie" is also a euphemism for the very same part of the female anatomy that has long, and falsely, been rumored to "taste like chicken and smell like fish," or he is, as they say on that side of the Atlantic, taking the piss.

Alanis Morissette may not know what irony is, but I certainly do, so I was thrilled to discover that the funniest contribution to this proliferation of all things potty, a book titled The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business, was published by the same house that employs the editor who had pooh-poohed my own mildly scatological offering.

The story begins on a fine sunny morning when the mole pokes his head out of the ground. His timing couldn't have been worse and by the time we reach page two, the dirty deed has been done--somebody, or something, has shat on the mole's head! Aghast, the mole cries, "How mean!" and demands to know, "Who has done this on my head?" The indignant mole storms around the farm attempting to discover who is responsible for the egregious insult. "Did you do this on my head?" he asks a dove, horse, rabbit, goat, cow, and pig. Every single one of them denies committing the crime by answering, "Me? No, how could I? I do it like this!" and then proceeding to graphically demonstrate why it is biologically impossible for them to be the guilty party. The mole is thoroughly perplexed until he chances upon a couple of doo-doo connoisseurs who are finally able to solve the mystery.

Interestingly, when I asked to interview someone at Raincoast Books about its decision to publish the story of the mole, the staff acted like people caught in a suddenly putrid elevator and denied having anything whatsoever to do with it.

When I approached a librarian with a stack of Captain Underpants books to get her opinion on the recent rise in popularity of this genre, I got the answer before I could even ask the question. As soon as she saw what I was carrying, she said, "Oh. You've got all the Captain Underpants books. There was a little boy who's been looking for them." A pang of guilt hit me, thinking that I was depriving the kid of something that meant far more to him than me. As soon as the librarian gave me a description of the boy, I looked around and spotted him. I marched over to the boy, said, "I hear you're looking for Captain Underpants," and handed the books over to him. The boy grinned, thanked me profusely, and ran to his friends, screaming, "I've got Captain Underpants!" In this age of increasing illiteracy, anything that gets a nine-year-old kid that excited about reading has to be a good thing.