You will know it is time to turn the page when you hear the chimes ring like this.

They weren’t all Disney, I grant you, but all the ones we had were. Tapes, with the same thing on both sides that came alongside a picture book. I don’t remember how many we had; certainly not as many as there were. I strongly suspect that the ones we had were purchased on family trips to Disneyland, though I don’t remember not having them. I only remember one specific title, which we’ll get to in a minute.

As a parent, I can promise you that reading the same book over and over to your child can be boring. (My kid is currently insisting on Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late every night at bedtime, because it’s “the only book that calms me down.”) So to deal with this, someone came up with the brilliant idea of recording books on first record and then tape, and selling the parents book and recording together. And in theory, you could maybe get the kid aware of how the words spoken line up with the written word and encourage reading.

It’s not a terrible idea, really. Especially for working parents, single parents, and varying other parents who are in some way too busy to spend six hours a day reading the same three books over and over again. (I know exactly why children want to hear the same books over and over, and I do it even though I find it frustrating, but you have to admit, not the best part about being a parent.) This way, your kid can have someone read to them, and you can still do the housework and get dinner on the table. Win-win!

What’s more, I seem to recall that several of ours were of movies from the vaults. When I was a child, you couldn’t buy the movie and watch it whenever you wanted; Disney took a long time hopping on the home video bandwagon, as I recall, and anyway we were early adopters and still didn’t own our first VCR until I was something like five. Meaning my older sister was already seven. A lot of us grew up not being able to just pop in Cinderella, which I think was one of the ones we had. So you’d buy the book and look at the pictures, at least, which wasn’t the same as the movie but wasn’t bad.

Then, there was the one I do distinctly remember having—a story about an orphan boy riding It’s a Small World. And going through the ride initially sad because he didn’t know anything about his heritage or what his “real” name was. (I’m pretty sure that even at the time, I was firm that his “real” name was whatever name he was called, and if his missing parents had wanted him to be called something specific, they should’ve at least left a note.) And the ride teaches him that it doesn’t matter where he’s from, because he’s from this planet and shares something with everyone in it. It’s not a bad message, as far as that goes, but it was a deeply weird book for all that. Which has been uploaded to YouTube. By several people, I think.

I am also delighted to announce that they still make these things. On CD now, of course, because while I still have a working tape deck, not a lot of other people do, and most of the kinds of people with record players do not have kids or don’t have an interest in corporate tie-ins or, you know, trust their kids with their record player. (We ran out of space, so mine simply isn’t hooked up!) I’ve actually put a handful of them on Simon’s Amazon list and will probably buy a couple for Christmas, because they’re cheap and will be a nice “you get to open a few presents” accompaniment to his frankly rather expensive main present this year. And he, too, will know it is time to turn the page, though to be fair to him he’s almost reading already and would anyway.