Next week, I'll be discussing How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. I hope you have picked it up and read it. From my very first blog entry here, I have kept an eye out for ideas that help people buy and sell better. Like the study on EBay buying behavior, many of those resources for consumers are not aimed at real estate consumers. Lehrer’s book is case in point; it has two pages that are indexed as “real estate shopping.” I see the book as being all about how to buy and sell anything better. Please join the discussion.

Besides the announcement of the upcoming book discussion, today, the topic is children’s books.

Last week, one of my clients had the experience of seeing a house go under agreement on MLS before she could see it in real life. She panicked. Then she apologized to me for acting like “Chicken Little.” There is great power in the cultural stories that we read to our children. Chicken Little is a modern myth about jumping to conclusions that the worst is happening. I immediately understood her emotional state when she called herself “Chicken Little.”

I countered her Chicken Little with, The Little House. I was introduced to this book by the late Hilda Silverman, who was an agent I worked with. She was a native of Gloucester; so was the author. It’s a wonderful book about a house that gets encroached upon, over and over, until it finally gets moved to a place where is can regain its former happiness. It is a book about the expansion of cities and towns and its effect on housing.

I refrained from using The Little Engine that Could. It is not my style to be that rah-rah.

My personal favorite children's real estate book is Creaky Old House. It’s a book about how one house repair leads to another, and another.

Do you have a favorite children's book that embodies the market, your buying experience, or your selling experience?