Once Upon a Potty

Once Upon a Potty is a children's book by Alona Frankel that is aimed to help potty training. Its original version was published in 1975 in Hebrew and referred to boys only. Up to 2009, there are versions of it referring to girls too, and translations of it to various languages were published, and well sold. There are also cartoon and audio tape versions of it. It has been recommended in special education classes dating back to 1985. The female version has been available since the early nineties.

The book contains a story, told from the point of view of a mother of a toddler who tries to potty train. This toddler has a different name on different versions of the book (Joshua, Prudence, Naftaly, Ziona…). The story first describes that toddler’s body; He or she has hands to play with, legs to walk with, a bottom for sitting, a penis (boy) or pee-pee (girl) to wee-wee from and in their buttocks they have “a hole to poo-poo from”. The rest of story tells about the child’s potty training process.

On the book, after the child uses the potty for the first time, he or she says “bye-bye wee-wee, bye-bye poo-poo.” However, in the Hebrew version this sentence also contains the provocative phrase “see you on the seashore”.^[1]

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