‘Buffalo Fluffalo’ From Comedy Writer Bess Kalb and Illustrator Erin Kraan

Illustrations © 2024 by Erin Kraan

One day comedy writer Bess Kalb was reading a book to her son about national parks that her husband had brought home.

“To indoctrinate him into becoming a camping person,” Kalb explains. “So far it hasn’t worked, which is great.”

But there was a buffalo on one page. And she read the word “buffalo.” She remembers her son looked at her with a little twinkle in his eye because “buffalo” — of course — is an extremely silly-sounding word. So, she pushed it.

“I said ‘Yeah it’s a “buffalo fluffalo,’ and he cracked up.”

Like any comedy writer worth her salt, Bess Kalb — who writes for Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show — knows how to read a room. She wrote Buffalo Fluffalo, her first children’s book, that very night.

It’s about a buffalo who believes he has to bluffalo and puffalo himself into appearing big and tough to his neighbors. He rebuffalos every neighbor who tries to offer him friendship. Until a huge rain cloud comes and dumps a ton of water over Mr. Buffalo and all his fluffalo goes puffalo.

“When it’s revealed that he’s just a little pipsqueak — a word that makes my oldest child laugh a lot — his friends and community tell him he doesn’t have to act tough,” says Kalb. “And they love him anyway.”

For this book, Bess Kalb knew she needed an illustrator who got that yes, here was a story about toxic masculinity, but that it was also a funny book about toxic masculinity.

“I wanted to give my child a book that helped him understand kindness and empathy,” says Kalb, “with a laugh.”

And the joke hinges on the reveal page — when the reader and all the other characters…