This is an idea that has been percolating for some time and I think it’s time to finally share it. POOPING IS LOGICAL! is a potty-training book for young children and their parents based on the tenets of Vulcan philosophy as established in Star Trek. It’s an idea that my wife Leah and I, both of us geek parents, came up with after going through the travails of potty-training our own three year-old daughter. It’s a real potty-training book with real advice for getting your kid out of diapers and sitting on the potty like a big kid.
Working on this idea with my wife has been a really great collaboration. I’m a Star Trek obsessive and she’s a trained childcare professional who looked after other families’ toddlers for years before we had our own. So we were both able to bring a bit of our own expertise to it. POOPING IS LOGICAL! tells the story of a young Vulcan child who, just like kids on Earth, is hesitant to make the leap out of diapers and onto the potty. Fortunately his parents, who are wise and loving, are on hand to help him through this transition and assure him that pooping on the potty is a perfectly natural, safe, and grown-up thing to do. In a society based on logic, what could be more logical than pooping?
To Illustrate the book I reached out to my friend Mike Krahulik, the co-founder of the fantastic Penny Arcade. He’s been one of my favorite comic artists for a long time and his whimsical style seemed perfectly suited to a children’s book. He did some preliminary sketches and then the beautiful front cover you see above. Oh, and here’s the back cover:
Here’s the problem. We can’t get anyone to take this seriously. My agents have reached out to the people at Paramount and Bad Robot, who currently hold sway over anything Trek-related, and they apparently have no interest. Something about not wanting to associate their brand with poop? Whatever. I’m fairly confident that geeky parents of my generation would be all over a book like this. I can’t imagine a better nerdy baby shower gift. It’s intended to make potty-training – an often arduous and prolonged endeavor at the best of times – fun for both kids and their parents.
There’s been a big surge in this kind of publishing lately, Star Wars leading the charge with great little books like Darth Vader & Son and Vader’s Little Princess. Those are really fun little novelties that appeal to geeky parents and kids alike, and POOPING IS LOGICAL! is in that same vein, but with the added benefit of having real potty-training advice and tips that you can actually use. And I refuse to believe that whoever approved A Very Klingon Khristmas (which I proudly bought, I might add) would fail to see the merit in this.
Under normal circumstances Mike, Leah and I would just crowdfund this thing and I’m pretty confident we’d hit our target. The Star Trek license is the issue. So the plan now is to put this idea out there on the internets in the hope of sparking a bit of buzz and perhaps getting the powers that be to take this a little more seriously. If POOPING IS LOGICAL! is something you’d be interested in seeing on bookshelves, do me a favor and help spread this around. Note this tumblr post, share it on Facebook and Twitter, with the hashtag #POOPINGISLOGICAL. Every little helps. Thanks!
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