When I buy something online I want to know what turns up in the box, and I resent having to work it out from photographs. So here is the whole list, including the two things that do not arrive in the box at all.
1. The storybook
Twenty-six fables, one for every letter, A to Z. Each one is a fault: Aggression, Boastfulness, Cowardice, all the way to Zealotry. Each fable is in rhyme, four verses, and gets six painted pages of its own.
On the first page the fault is printed in gold, next to the animal. That is deliberate. The child learns the word and the picture at the same moment, which is a trick I stole from nobody in particular but wish I had thought of forty years earlier.
2. The card deck
Fifty-four real playing cards. Not novelty cards, a proper deck you could play poker with if you were that sort of grandfather.
Every face carries a fable animal, its flaw, and the virtue that answers it. Every card also carries a code that opens that fable's song. Eleven games come with it, and I would guess your children will invent a twelfth by the second week.
3. Twenty-six songs
One per fable. They are the reason the whole thing exists, because a child who will not sit still for a moral will sit still for a tune, and will then sing the moral in the car for a fortnight without noticing.
4. Twenty-six karaoke videos
The same songs with the words on screen and a moving highlight, so a child who is learning to read gets to follow along without being told they are learning to read.
5. The online games
A game for every fable, played in a browser. Nothing to install, no sign-up, no advert. Two minutes each. A child plays the selfish dog guarding hay he cannot eat, and works out on their own what is wrong with it, which is a great deal more effective than me telling them.
6. The colouring book
168 pages. And here is the honest bit: it does not come in the box. It is a download, unlocked by a word printed on the last page of the storybook. You print a page, a fable, or all 168, as many times as you like, on your own paper.
It is not sold separately and it is not free. Only people who have the storybook can open it. I decided that on purpose and I will defend it: the colouring book is a reward for owning the story, not a product on its own.
And the twelve classroom activities
Also not in the box. They are for teachers, and for parents who end up running something for six children on a wet Saturday. Circle-time shapes, mostly, built on the fables you already have.
What it costs
$49.95 during the launch, up from a regular $59.95, shipping from 12 September.
I am aware that is not a small amount for a children's book. It is not a children's book, it is six things, and I will make that argument properly later in the week, when I do the arithmetic out loud.
Before any of that, start with the free colouring posters. Twenty-six of them, one per letter, and they cost you nothing but paper.