Round 1: (5) The Count's Castle vs. (12) Bob

Baby goth or baby alarm clock? Pick your poison!


The Count's Castle
by Susan Hood and Tom Leigh
Available in board book format. (Amazon)

The Count's Castle is a recent Sesame Street book, which means it unfortunately features a lot of Elmo and Zoe and not one of the superior monsters (#TeamGrover 4 lyfe). That being said, it's good for appealing to fledgling goth kids like H., asking them to count bats, spiders, and black cats. I highly recommend it if you'd prefer your kid to start rebelling in their teen years by painting their fingernails black and sneaking used Siouxie vinyl into the house instead of...whatever stupid thing teens will be doing in 2030. Filming themselves snorting their rations of Soylent powder or something like that, probably.

It's also apparently part of a "Where's the Puppy" book series, which never actually figures into the story at all, aside from there being a small dog hiding on every page.

Bob
by Sandra Boynton
Available in board book format. (Amazon)

Bob is a charming collection of Christmas poems, with illustrations featuring Bob, the titular tiny reindeer, enjoying the rest of the Boynton menagerie's holiday festivities. One of the poems is about a kid waking their parents up early to bug them about Santa, so be wary of that if you don't want to give your child any ideas, or not, if you need a holiday alarm clock.

This was in heavy rotation around Christmas, of course, but hasn't been as popular in recent months.

Match-up Analysis

This is a real toss up. The Count's Castle doesn't make it into the bedtime rotation very much, but he'll recognize his new friends Ernie and Bert from the cover, so that could be a big draw. Bob is still likely to be fresh in H's mind, but it was never a huge hit for him and we were mostly just reading it because, "hey, it's Christmas."

Prediction

A slight advantage to Bob just on account of the visible kitty on the cover.

Results

Clearly H. is keeping Christmas with him all through the year, because he chose Bob.

Up Next

We'll see if Christmas is any match for cars when Bob goes up against Things That Go on April 9th.