How to Sell Me a Picture Book

The JCC, where SteelyKid goes to day care, is having a book sale, so the lobby has been full of books for sale the last few days as we've headed out. Getting SteelyKid away from the books is pretty difficult, as you would expect from our daughter.

We've mostly avoided getting anything, but yesterday, I caved and bought the Curious George board book with pull-out flaps that she latched onto. Why? This page:

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The book is a collection of pages showing various places George goes to be curious, and has pull-out tabs showing a person associated with the place, and a thing associated with the place. I probably would've bought it just for having a museum and a scientist among the places and people represented, but they get extra bonus points for having the scientist not be a white-haired man, but a dark-skinned woman.

Still with the white lab coat, alas, but you can't win them all.

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Ah, yes, the white lab coat. Have we discussed this before? The subject has come up on Languagelog ( http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2515 ), a source of lots of good stuff, including non-language assessments of scientific results published in popular media. I highly recommend it.

Every time I go to visit the science-types where I work, I have to put on a white lab coat. They're already wearing them, of course. So for me they're terribly common.

Lab coats are for tie-dying!

By Jolyon Bloomfield (not verified) on 01 Dec 2010 #permalink

Could it be that she likes this book better than your own? After all, your book doesn't have any pictures, other than the cover and one of the author on the back flap. Will your new book on Gen Rev be the same? Please, at least have a picture of a dog falling off a ladder! Just kidding, I understand keeping publishing costs down is important.