Once Upon a Potty

Once Upon a Potty is a picture book by Alona Frankel for young children, aimed to help with their potty training. Its original version was published in 1975 in Hebrew and referred to boys only. There are versions of it referring to girls too, and translations of it to various languages were published, and has sold more than 4 million copies. There are also animated and audio tape versions of it. It has been recommended in special education classes dating back to 1985. The female version has been available since the early eighties.

The book contains a story, told from the point of view of a mother of a toddler who tries to potty train. This toddler has a different name on different versions of the book (Joshua, Prudence, Naftaly, Ziona...). The story first describes that toddler's body, he or she has hands to play with, legs to walk with, a bottom for sitting, a pee-pee to wee-wee from and in their buttocks they have a little hole to poo-poo from. The rest of story tells about the child’s potty training process.

On the book, after the child uses the potty for the first time, he or she says "Bye-bye, wee-wee, bye-bye, poo-poo." However, in the Hebrew version this sentence also contains the provocative phrase "See you on the seashore."[1]