A new era is dawning in my home: my youngest child is on the brink of coming out of nappies. Eight and half years since my first encounter with Pampers, my relationship with absorbent undergarments is finally coming to an end, at least until I hit my dotage.
The only downside is a horrific book we foolishly withdrew from the library, called Pirate Pete’s Potty. We should have known it would be bad: it has a button on the front; press it and a tinny, echoey sort of cheer emerges from somewhere within the cardboard. All books with electronic sound effects should be banned, I’ve come to conclude.
But Pirate Pete’s Potty offends me for another reason. It’s horrifically literal. It might as well be an instruction leaflet from IKEA. Here’s a sample: “‘The potty is for doing your wees and poos in, instead of your nappy,’ explains Mummy.”
Wow. Thanks Mummy Pirate. I really needed this information to be printed onto dead trees and bundled up with a battery and plastic speaker so that it can never be recycled. I’d never have been able to explain this to my child alone. Here was me thinking that books were supposed to have stories in — to use narrative and creativity to explore the emotional reality of childhood experiences. More fool me.
Fortunately, there is one really great piece of literature about potty training: the 1986 classic by Tony Ross, I Want My Potty. In this book, a small princess navigates the ups and downs of life without nappies. It seems absurd to summarise the plot of a 12-page book for toddlers, comprising perhaps 100 words in total, so I won’t. What matters is the book has a plot. It has ambition and despair, admiration and shame, jeopardy and disaster. And it’s funny. It’s even funny for parents, as the adults of this peculiar fictional kingdom (king, queen, admiral, prime minister) move heaven and earth to cater to the needs of their tiny overlord, only to fail. Every parent has felt like that.
A great children’s book goes far beyond the words on the page. It pulls you in. You can talk to your child about every aspect of it. You can make things up. You can imagine more. And you can spot little things that are perhaps only for you, the parents: something to help you feel you’re not alone as you struggle through the days of dirty knees and runny noses.
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