I believe books cure problems. The SAT study guide got me into college. A resume guide helped me through a bevy of jobs. The bookstore nurtured me through my lonely twenties. When I couldn’t find a husband, I bought a book. When I found the husband, I bought another book. When I couldn’t decide whether to get an MBA or to start writing…. you bet, I bought a book. When I got pregnant, I bought Everything You Needed To Know.

When my son Allen was born, he decided not to follow any schedules set forward in my manuals. He did not read my books with their timelines and checklists.

I was fine with him doing his own thing with just about everything except the potty. I began pestering him at two. I bought a book to solve this problem.

I’m not talking about the “how to train your child to go” book. Several helpful friends have given me a gross ton of those books. I’m talking about books that feature a toddler as the hero, taking actions all his own, and deciding to use the pot, and throw away those landfill-clogging-disposable diapers that have been raiding my pocketbook since July 2004.

Vulgarity – in all of it’s grossness – can be a great giggle inducer for the picture book crowd and for the parents who get to read to them over and over and over again. I know this because I have read so many of them I could recite them with every flush. It’s a book about poop and pee. They laugh and you can too.

Every 3 months. New book, new underwear, new technique, and fresh attitude. By the end of the week, we would both be in tears, with zero success. But the book would be read six times a day. He liked the books, but the potty could take a hike. Exhaustion was setting in. I wondered if I would have to convert his college fund to future diaper purchases.

I didn’t mind a little fart humor. I didn’t even care when we went into the bathroom to read on the potty. Two and half years later, I was begging and scratching to get out. My beloved son, 4 ½ years old, would not potty train.

Yes, before you start to suggest anything – I tried it. I had two and a half years to try. Cherrios. Bribery. Chuck-E-Cheese. I even threatened Guantanamo Bay. Nothing worked. I went back to what I knew. Get a book and try again.

Then I found Have You Seen My Potty? Farm animals steal Sally Sue’s potty (which they call a poo-pot). She’s desperate to find it, because she has “something very important to do.” The animals are all very impressed with the poo-pot because it has improved farm hygiene and now they don’t have to walk around stepping in poo anymore.

The rhyme is perfect. The pictures show the animals sitting on the pot, as Sally Sue looks everywhere for it. The reader knows the secret. I laugh every time, so does my little guy.

I don’t want to say this was the book that made it happen, or it just happened while we were reading. Maybe it was the laughter that just made us all relax while a little something dropped into the pot.

Additional Potty reading for connoisseurs:

- Once upon a Potty* – by Alona Frankel
- My Big Boy Potty* – Old fashioned, but he liked it.
- Big Boys use the potty* – DK Publishing (with lovely stickers and a chart)
- Everyone Poops –by Taro Gomi and Amanda Mayer Stinchecum
- Diapers are not forever- Elizabeth Verdick and Marieka Heinlen. Simple bright illustration that show families, boys and girls of all ethnicities.
*Girl and boy versions.

Bettina’s picture book, Moose and Magpie, will debut at Book Expo America on May 30, 2009. She is thankful it is not a potty book.

MODELS DON'T EAT CHOCOLATE COOKIES

• Publication Season/Year: February, 2009
• Publisher: Dial Books for Young Readers
• Release Date: February 5, 2009
• ISBN (hardcover): 978-0803734-35-7
• ISBN (paperback): 978-0-803732-96-4

Thirteen-year-old Celeste Harris is no string bean, but comfy sweatpants and a daily chocolate cookie suit her just fine. Her under-the-radar lifestyle could have continued too, if her aunt hadn’t entered her in the HuskyPeach Modeling Challenge. To get out of it, she’s forced to launch Operation Skinny Celeste-because, after all, a thin girl can’t be a fat model! What Celeste never imagined was that losing weight would help her gain a backbone . . . or that all she needed to shine was a spotlight.

A hilarious debut featuring friendship, family, mean girls and even celebrity crushes, Celeste’s story is a delicious treat that doesn’t add a pound.

MY BIG NOSE AND OTHER NATURAL DISASTERS

• Publication Season/Year: Spring 2009
• Publisher: Harcourt
• Release Date: April 1, 2009
• ISBN (hardcover): TBD
• ISBN (paperback): 978-0152066437

It’s the end of junior year, and summer is about to begin. The Summer of Passion, to be exact, when Jory Michaels plans to explore all the possibilities of the future–and, with any luck, score a boyfriend in the process. But Jory has a problem. A big problem. A curvy, honking, bumpy, problem in the form of her Super Schnozz, the one thing standing between Jory and happiness. And now, with the Summer of Passion stretched before her like an open road, she’s determined for Super Schnozz to disappear. Jory takes a job delivering wedding cakes to save up for a nose job at the end of the summer; she even keeps a book filled with magazine cutouts of perfect noses to show the doctor. But nothing is ever easy for accident-prone Jory–and before she knows it, her Summer of Passion falls apart faster than the delivery van she crashes. In her hilarious and heartbreaking debut novel, Sydney Salter delivers a story about broadening your horizons, accepting yourself, and finding love right under your nose.

“Complex, likeable, believable characters and a fresh, appealing fictional voice pull together this very agreeable summer romance.” –Kirkus Reviews

Soul Enchilada

• Publication Season/Year: Spring 2009
• Publisher: Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins
• Release Date: April 7, 2009
• ISBN (hardcover): 0061673013
• ISBN (paperback): TBD

Bug Smoot was thirteen years old when her grandfather put her soul up as collateral on his dream car –a classic 1958 Cadillac Biarritz.  Now, five years later, Papa C is dead and buried, and Bug is trying to make it on her own by delivering pizzas and staying one step ahead of her landlord.  And then the repo man arrives.  Only Mr. Beals–stinking to high heaven of rotten eggs and sporting leathery wings–is not just any repo man…just as Pesto, Bug’s longtime unrequited crush, is not just any car was attendant.

PARIS PAN TAKES THE DARE

• Publication Season/Year: Summer 2009
• Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
• Release Date: June 11, 2009
• ISBN (hardcover): 978-0399250439
• ISBN (paperback): TBD

Twelve-year-old Paris Pan’s life is a mess. She’s just moved to a tiny town in Nowheresville, Oklahoma; her family life is a comical disaster; her new friends are more like frenemies; and the boy she has a crush on is a dork. Things couldn’t possibly get worse, until she discovers that a girl mysteriously died years ago while taking a seventh-grade rite of passage–the Dare– right near Paris’s new house. So when Paris starts hearing strange noises coming from the creepy run-down shed in her backyard, she thinks they could be a message from the ghost of a girl. But while she has no plans to make contact with the great beyond, her two new friends have other thoughts. Everyone who’s anyone takes the Dare, and now it’s Paris’s turn.

MY INVENTED LIFE by Lauren Bjorkman

• Publication Season, Fall 2009
• Publisher: Henry Holt Books for Young Readers
• Release Date: September 29, 2009
• ISBN 13: 978-0-8050-8950-9

Roz and Eva are sisters, friends, and rivals. Roz fantasizes about snagging the lead in the school play and landing sexy skate god Bryan as her boyfriend. Sadly, a few obstacles stand between her and her dream. For one, Eva is the more talented actress. And Bryan happens to be Eva’s boyfriend. But does Eva have a secret life with her cheerleading partner? Inquiring minds need to know.

Roz, who prides herself on random acts of insanity, hatches a scheme to get Eva to open up. The plan backfires, and Eva is furious. Roz finds herself neck deep in her invented life. When Roz meets a mercurial boy with a big problem, she begins to understand the complex feelings beneath the labels. And she gets a second chance to earn Eva’s trust.

Fan trailer by Fausto Umanzor:

REVIEWS and BLURBS:

Roz’s voice is witty and genuine as she moves through the ups and downs of coming out (and eventually coming clean). Evocative of Boy Meets Boy and Dramarama, this makes for fun, thought-provoking reading. Publisher’s Weekly

This novel is particularly good at evoking teenage confusion about sexual preference and identity, and Bjorkman’s depiction of the drama-club crowd is absolutely spot-on, especially the characters’ trading of Shakespearean insults online and the practical jokes they play on one another. Narrator Roz is funny, well intentioned, and likable despite her cluelessness, and she is surrounded by a realistic cast of adult and teen characters representing a wide variety of viewpoints and sexual preferences. School Library Journal

Interspersing Shakespearian references and themes, Roz’s narrative is humorous and heartfelt as it intimately explores issues from sibling relationships to sexual identity. Booklist

I knew I was going to like this book the second the main character asked a Ouija Board if her sister was a lesbian. My Invented Life does a great job capturing the confusing alternate reality of teenage sexuality, and does it in a refreshingly authentic and honest teen voice. Brent Hartinger, author of Geography Club

Shakespeare would be proud to be included in this smart, funny, cheeky book. Ellen Wittlinger, author of Hard Love

Lauren Bjorkman’s My Invented Life is a hilarious, thoughtful, and engaging novel about the power of perception. My Invented Life … is ultimately an uplifting story that offers insight and hope with a nice dash of humor. Highly recommended. Heather Aimee O’Neill, AfterEllen.com

My Invented Life is a fantastic look at sisterhood, drama geeks, and the far-from-simple subject of sexual identity. Funny with depth = my idea of pure reading delight. Shelf Elf

My Invented Life is a smart, honest novel that is not only refreshing in it’s depiction of teens coming to terms with their true selves, but it’s also really fun! The Book Butterfly