The SweetPea3 is an MP3 player for children, designed for use by kids as young as a year of age. Wipe that look of horror of your face. First, shake out the instinctive heebie-jeebies you might get at the thought of introducing young kids to too much technology - while an excess of TV may stunt baby's development, no one is currently claiming that there's such thing as too much music. Second, know that the SweetPea3 has a built-in speaker and is intended for use without headphones, although a jack is provided to help keep this device functional for older kids.

The SweetPea3 runs off a single AA battery (thank you, Mr. Lemay, for not using AAAs) and claims to squeeze 40 hours of playing time out of it. The controls on the device are super-simple: Play (a right-facing arrow), Back (a left-facing arrow) and Stop (a square). Parents access additional controls - which playlist is being used (it supports up to three), the volume, and the period the player operates before automatically shutting off - by pressing and holding multiple buttons for several seconds, and then toggling through the very limited options before exiting back into play mode.

The physical design of this object is itself deserving of praise. The large, round hole makes the SweetPea3 feel like a small handbag. It is lightweight and its soft, rubbery TPE shell (thermoplastic elastomer, a great, clean plastic that is considered food-grade, even by us) protects its delicate music-playing self, which incidentally doesn't contain any lead, even in the circuitry. (Many electronic toys do, not that it is likely to get out and affect your child.)

We are not new to the concept of music players for kids. The best we found was the Sansa Shaker, which we highly recommend. But it is a bit delicate for most toddlers. We tried (and loved) the iHome boom box, an unexpected boon for our toddler's 'round-the-house jam sessions, and liked the Tadpole shell too. Yet I fantasized about still simpler controls - play, stop - without giving Z access to volume controls. Crude drawings emerged featuring parts made of cardboard. Unfortunately, the limits of my handyman skills dictated buttons that actually pushed the physical controls on the iPod through its sophisticated cardboard-box case, a challenge I was unfit to master. I also wasn't too motivated, because how many people actually have an "extra" iPod lying around that they want their kid using? Clearly, an MP3 player needed to be designed specifically for little hands - simple controls, rubberized shell, and easy to add stuff to.

Thankfully, inventor Dan Lemay has things like drive, vision, and actual skills. These are magical things. And he has used them to create an MP3 player that does just what it should, and no more.

The SweetPea3 is the best designed portable music player we've seen for the youngest children - no proprietary format to monkey with, just plug it in via USB and download your MP3s onto it. It costs $60, which is at the high end of our price range for this kind of item, but certainly reasonable for a small, startup company with their first product to sell, particularly when it's this good.

Its only real competition is the Sansa Shaker, which we like very much for older toddlers and think has better staying power for older children, with its dual headphone jacks and compact size. The SweetPea3's pastel colors (lavender or blue), handbag design and rubbery shell make it clear this is designed for little ones, and older kids will likely shun it - a model with a bolder, richer color might help it resonate a little better with older kids.

The only design feature we'd like to see is a dual-function stop button that pauses instead of stopping so that kids can halt a song (or, crucially, a story) and then start where they left off, instead of starting the track over. In every other way, the design's simplicity seems completely in keeping with its mission. Even at its loudest setting, the device doesn't get really loud, which means that young children holding the device up to their ear (something Z used to do with our Sansa Shaker) is not something you need to worry about. The company also has heard a lot of positive feedback from people who work with older, disabled kids and adults.

Startups like this sometimes rush products to market that are not ready for prime time and then hope to fix problems in a later release. SweetPea has not done that; this product is ready. Companies that start small like this often fail, even with ideas at least this good, because they cannot master the give and take of supply and demand, given the way they have their products manufactured. Each production order is a leap of faith and a personal risk.

This means two things: One, the SweetPea3 currently has pretty limited availability - ordering now means you could actually get one now instead of after the holidays are over. Two, if the company can sell what they have early enough, they will have the money (and the perceived demand) to order more, which will result in their not being sold out closer to the holidays, allowing them to increase their profits and start the next year off strong. If all of their sales come in during November, they will have the worst of both worlds - they will run out and have to turn away customers and will not have enough time to get more before the shopping season is over. I offer these observations with total disinterest in the outcome, except that we like to see good startups succeed, and what people like Dan Lemay do is very challenging.

In the end, I think the Sansa Shaker is still the standout device for kids ages 4 and up - it too is easy to control, and it has a fun factor (it can be shaken to change the track) and look that will appeal to older children. But speaking as an early adopter of all of the devices we've thrust into Z's hands, it is really fun to give kids some autonomy over something like music, so they can play it at will and carry it with them instead of depending on adults to cue things up, and the younger you can make this experience fun for them, the better. For kids from one to about four years of age, we think this is one startup that has thoughtfully tailored a true MP3 player to a niche audience who really benefits from having access to one.

You can learn more about the SweetPea3 and order one on SweetPea's website. It comes loaded with some music and stories.