The Story Behind Our Stories

It started with a toddler who wouldn't sit down.

Bathtime in our house had become a nightly negotiation — me kneeling on the bathmat, him standing up for the fourth time, both of us ready for the day to be over. One night, we tried a bath book, hoping to buy some seated calm.

It worked for about forty seconds. The book had ten words in it. There was nothing to read.

So the search began for a longer one — a bath book with an actual story, the kind we read at bedtime. It didn't exist. Not on Amazon, not in a bookstore, not anywhere. Every bath book on the market was a handful of words on waterproof pages: a toy shaped like a book.

Which seemed like a strange thing for the world to be missing. Bathtime happens every single night. It's one of the few moments in a day with a child that's guaranteed, and the books made for it weren't really books.

So I wrote them myself.

Three waterproof books, set at a watering hole called Walla-Walla-Wando. Beatrice the baboon gets muddy in a wildebeest migration. Harriet the hornbill gets dusty when a termite mound collapses. Leona the leopard gets filthy racing a warthog. Each one needs a bath. Each one learns something along the way — gratitude, kindness, helping others.

The stories average 250 words. Most bath books have about ten. That difference is the entire point: 250 words is long enough to actually read together, to ask a question at the end, to have the kind of small conversation that makes a routine feel like something other than a chore.

They're the only bath books with real stories.

As parents, we know the benefits of daily reading and of strong engagement during routines. But don’t just take our word for it:

“Exposure to words is the single most important thing that you can do to help build the language pathways in your child’s brain.” -Laura Phillips, PsyD, senior director of the Learning and Development Center at the Child Mind Institute

“'You can turn almost any home-based activity or interaction into an opportunity.’ But bath time, feeding, diaper changes and getting dressed present the best opportunities for both babies and toddlers. ‘It is in those caregiving moments that some of the biggest brain boosting interactions occur.'” -Dr. Aliza Pressman, developmental psychologist and author of “The Five Principles of Parenting”

“The more you read to your child the more you help the neurons in this region [of the brain] to grow and connect in a way that will benefit the child in the future.”-Dr. John Hutton, pediatrician & clinical researcher, Cincinnati Children's Hospital