Make it cheaper by making it worse

(Book cover from Amazon.com)

One of my daughter's favourite books is "The Baby Goes Beep" by Rebeca O'Connell (writer) and Ken Wilson-Max (illustrator). She is VERY familiar with the book. How familiar? At the library we we saw another book by the same illustrator and she pointed to the drawing on the cover and said "Baby Goes Beep".

In the children's book market there are a couple of ways that publishers release picture books. The conventional hard cover and the board book. Board books are more rugged and the titles are usually aimed at a younger audience. However, because the pages are thicker than regular books, the publishers must sometimes edit the content to reduce the length.

The problem is that this editing process can make big changes to the overall book. "The Baby Goes Beep" tells the story of a baby going grocery shopping with its parents. The three of them come home and the baby bangs on the groceries, sings, flips through a books, eats lunch, makes a mess, has a bath, gets lots of kisses, and finally goes to sleep. The final illustration in the hardcover is of the baby standing up in its crib, while the parents are fast asleep on the sofa in the background.

The rhythm is the same for each word. "The baby goes beep", "The baby goes beep beep", "The baby goes beep beep beep beep", etc.

The board book version misses out some of the words, "The baby goes la", and also misses out the two repetition version, "The baby goes beep beep".

The problem that I have with the board book version is that the story is incomplete and the rhythm of the words is lacking. So, as I read it to my daughter I had to "flesh it out". So, yes the board book version is cheaper (about 1/3 of the price) but it is not the same product and I think it is a an inferior product. In the world of audio books the cover would say "Abridged".

The publishers omitted this essential piece of information, leading me to think that I was getting the complete story. It's not the same thing and don't try to pretend it is.