Ten Tiny Toes (Little, Brown, 2012)





You're supposed to love all your kids equally, but I suspect that no matter what else I write, Ten Tiny Toes may always be my sentimental favorite. I wrote it as a love letter to my kids, Sam and Ethan, whose toes would now be kinda gross to nibble, but back in the day....

It has been wonderful watching them grow into adults, just as the baby does in the book.

It was illustrated by Marc Brown, creator of the Arthur series. It was an Amazon #1 Hot New Release in New Baby Books, and was featured for several months as a Top Pick in Picture Books at Barnes & Noble. 

Into the world
Came ten tiny toes
A hundred times sweeter
Than one could suppose

Toes that were tiny
And tender and tasty
Toes more delicious
Than cinnamon pastry

Toes you could nuzzle
And nibble in bliss
Toes you could pattycake
Into a kiss






A Chinese-language version was released in 2017.



It's nice to imagine babies halfway around the world smiling and cooing and falling to sleep to this book. 

Little, Brown released it as a board book in 2018. When a baby starts chewing and slobbering on the sleeve of a picture book, Mom gently takes it away and says, "Let's don't chew on that, Sweetheart." But board books? Babies can chew and slobber all over them until they've consumed their daily diet of fiber. Long live board boards. Long live babies.



Fun story alert! In January-February 2019, Ten Tiny Toes got paired with Jimmy Fallon's Mama book in Amazon's algorithm. 


As Everything is Mama shot up the charts, so did Ten Tiny Toes. For several weeks it was among the top 1,000 books on Amazon, peaking at an impressive #109. For a week or so we out-sold all of the following classic children's books:



And I think I should frame this one, he-he...


3 comments:

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  2. Beautiful! I'm so glad that I found your blog.

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  3. Wonderful poem and wonder book.

    (I'm sure Tom Cruise couldn't do this :)

    Pam

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