Today I was able to sit down with my son and share with him one of the great works of modern literature, a classic story with themes as universal as they are profound.

I'm speaking, of course, of Alona Frankel's ONCE UPON A POTTY.

This timeless tale of a boy and his bowels is told from the point of view of his mother: "Hello. I am Joshua's mother. I'd like to tell you about Joshua and his new potty." The authoritative voice of mother-as-narrator hints at the story to come: a small boy's rite of passage, a comng-of-age that is not without its costs. We are first introduced to Joshua by way of the physical body, a body deconstructed through the labelling of its parts: "A mouth to talk with and eat with/Hands for playing/A pee-pee for making Wee-Wee..." Confronted with the as yet unknowable Potty, Joshua, despite being a walking catalogue of Benthian "purpose," attempts to assert his humanity through his curiosity and imaginative vision: "Was it a flower pot? ... Was it a milk bowl for the cat?" This vision, however, is repeatedly quashed: "No, it wasn't a flower pot ... No, it wasn't a milk bowl for the cat."

Joshua ultimately, tragically, becomes a prisoner of his potty, forced into long periods of unhealthy inactivity: "He sat and sat and sat and sat and sat and sat and sat and sat..," thus becoming complicit in the narrow circumscription of his own creative output: "and when he got up and looked into his potty he saw all of his Wee-Wee and Poo-Poo RIGHT INSIDE IT!" (original emphasis). The tragedy is that Joshua now completely identifies with the forces of his own oppression: "Joshua was very happy and proud and came to show me his full potty..."

In the final, heartrending scene, Joshua bids farewell to his childhood--"'Bye-bye, Wee-Wee, Bye-Bye, Poo-Poo,'"--taking his place in the ranks of regimented, repressed civilization. "And now he likes his potty even more and uses it" we are told, in words that toll with the bleak certainty of human fate, "every time."

I know the Roo Bear is still a bit young to appreciate the nuances of this great story, but I hope he will learn something from being exposed to it early!