Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Do yourself a favor and check this book out from the library before you decide to buy. I grew up with Little Critter books and we've been reading them to our 2 year old most of his life. He just loves them! However, we just got The New Potty and I am not impressed. Truth be told, I don't like most of the Gina Mayer/Mercer Mayer collabs. The illustrations are not as well done and the stories come off as either preachy or a bad attitude. In this particular book, we have Little Critter narrating about his little sister's experiences learning the potty. It's full of comments about how it's "weird" that sister practices sitting on the potty while watching TV, how he doesn't think she looks any cuter than him, and how he thinks she still acts like a baby, even when Mom and Dad say she's a big girl now once she's successfully using the potty. Sorry, none of that is helpful in giving my son a positive potty-learning experience. He does not have any siblings to understand the sibling-rivalry comments, and I highly doubt at age 2 he would grasp them even if he did. I don't need him thinking he's "weird" for practicing sitting on the potty wherever he feels like. And I don't need him getting the idea that even once he masters this big step in growing up, someone might still think he's just a baby. We're going to have to skip over many of the lines or make up something different when we read him this book. I wish Mercer had done a potty book long ago, on his own. His style of effortless, entertaining storytelling, while gently teaching life lessons, is sadly missing from these later books.