Toddler books in the Store

A surprising number of readers have been buying stuff through the Store,For reference, my biggest week has been a whopping $43. Which more than covers the site’s hosting fees. But I’m not giving up my day job yet. leading me to wonder, “What other tangible products do I have opinions about?”

It turns out, the tangible items I handle most these days are board books for my 17-month old daughter. She has her favorites; I have mine. I’ve taken the overlapping subset and created four new pages in the store with our mutual recommendations.

As a general word of advice for new parents, or those buying gifts for new parents: when it comes to books, think repetition. As you thumb through pages in the bookstore, ask yourself, “Will this provoke thoughts of murder-suicide upon the 50th reading?”

I’ve only included one book like that in my list, Sandra Boynton’s [Perritos](http://astore.amazon.com/johnaugustcom-20/detail/0689863039/002-0355819-1894408). It’s a counting book with dogs who bark in Spanish: “¡Jau! ¡Gau-Gau-Gau!” Fun at first, but really hard on the vocal cords after three times through.

The other books are generally great. I’m particularly partial to [Leslie Patricelli’s books](http://astore.amazon.com/johnaugustcom-20/002-0355819-1894408?%5Fencoding=UTF8&node=20), the complete canon of which I now have memorized. Sometimes, stuck with a cranky toddler, I find myself “reading” the Binky book to her, flipping the invisible pages. It buys a few more minutes, which is sometimes all you need.