Alphabet Books, Collected (ABC)

In an earlier post, I claimed that Alison Murray's Apple Pie ABC was the only alphabet book that told a story through words in alphabetical order. In that book, a mischievous dog is tempted by the apple pie cooling on the table.

Well, I have been proven wrong by the relatively recent Oops, Pounce, Quick, Run! by Mike Twohy which also tells the story of a dog, this time one whose beloved ball rolls into a mousehole.

And then I stumbled upon Old Black Fly by Jim Aylesworth, which uses a simlar format.  He tells the story of a black fly alighting on different objects or irritating various people which start with each letter of the alphabet in order.  Those letters are in a different color, literally highlighted on the page.  With stunning, splattery, and very funny art by Stephen Gammell, as well as a gory, satisfying ending, this one's a winner. My kindergarteners sat open-mouthed (really!) while they listened to it.

I'm also looking forward to the publication of The Little Red Cat Who Ran Away and Learned His ABC's (the Hard Way) in September.  It looks like a nice addition to the genre.













Another serendipitous discovery, found among the animal books, is Jan Garten's The Alphabet Tale, this 1964 book is still fresh and appealing with delightful illustrations by Muriel Batherman. Each recto (right-hand page) shows an animal tail, with a clue in rhyming verse.  On the following page, the last word of the rhyme names the animal the tail belongs to and shows the animal in full.  Rhyming intelligent and elephant and bottomless and hippopotamus are, in my opinion, strokes of genius.



Tomorrow's Alphabet by George Shannon and illustrated by Donald Crews would be another perfect interactive guessing game if it weren't for the fact that the answer is given on the facing page, rather than after the page turn.  I resorted to covering that page with a piece of paper to remedy the problem.  Each page states that a letter is for something it is decidedly NOT, but something they can or will turn into in the future.  For example, B is for eggs, since they will hatch into birds.  My kindergarteners caught on quickly and were soon shouting out their guesses.


Normally I wouldn't pick up a book about feelings. Too gooey, too sappy, too obvious.  But I'm so glad I picked up Today I Feel... An Alphabet of Feelings.  The feelings go way beyond the usual sad, mad, glad, and the illustrations do too.

 What are your favorite alphabet books?

More 2015 Favorites

So many good picture books came out this year!  Here are a few more favorites.

Ketzel, the Cat Who Composed. This story, based on real events about a cat who "composed" a piece of music for a competition, is utterly delightful.  I love how the illustrator captures the real composer's frustration, the cat's mischievousness, and the hustle and bustle of New York City.  By the way, ketzel means cat in Yiddish, and ketzele (pronounced KETZ-el-uh) is the diminutive.  You can even buy - separately - a CD of the piano competition at which the piece was played.

Tricky Vic: The Impossibly True Story of the Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower, written and illustrated by Greg Pizzoli.  How clever to use fingerprints for the faces of the "bad guys!"  This unique book about a con man is great for older children.

In a Village by the Sea by Muon Van, illustrated by Amy Chu.  Lovely illustrations show a Vietnamese fisherman's family waiting for him to come back from the sea.  The story-within-a-story (or painting-within-a-painting) element has readers questioning what is real.

Americanine: A Haute Dog in New York. Kebbi's energetic pencil drawings capture New York's frenetic energy better than (almost?) any I've seen.  The conceit that the narrator is a French dog who is visiting New York for the first time is unnecessary (any ignorant visitor would do; e.g., an alien, or, even better for a children's book, a young child) except to create the occasional pun ("haute dog"), the art more than makes up for it.  And there's the Orthodox Jew who appears in almost every drawing... why?  Are there any other recurring characters?  I suspect spending a bit more time with this book would pay off.

Imaginary Fred.  Have you ever attended a concert where two imaginary friends were the musicians? Have you ever introduced your imaginary friend to your friend's imaginary friend? This take on imaginary friends is unique and hilarious.  The sight of the baffled audience listening to music played by the imaginary friends (or perhaps they only hear silence?) is priceless.  There are quite a few new books about imaginary friends this year (We Forgot Brock! is another, and a big hit with my students), but this is my favorite.  

Wait. This one is perfect for the toddler-preschool crowd.  Mommy's in a hurry, but look at all that she's missing out on!  A beautiful take on how children live - and force their parents to live - in the moment.  Portis's style reminds me a bit of Lauren Castillo's here, especially as this book is set in New York City like much of Castillo's work.  I wish I'd included this one in my mock Caldecott.

Leo:A Ghost Story.  Shades of blue predominate in this story about a ghost who saves the day and finds a friend.

A Fine Dessert: Four Centuries, Four Families, One Delicious Treat by Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Sophie Blackall.  Showing how one dessert - blackberry fool - has been made in different ways throughout time not only serves as a timeline of kitchen technology (bundle of twigs - whisk - mechanical mixer - electric mixer), but also shows societal changes throughout history.

Home, written and illustrated by Carson Ellis.  A palette of brown, blue, and red showcases all kinds of homes, from the real (apartments, wigwams, boats), to the imaginary (a home on the moon with a view of Earth, the home of a Norse god).  Pair it with A House is a House For Me for a fun discussion of houses and the completely different types of art (one stark and simple; one extremely detailed) in each book.

The Little Book of Big Fears.  A clever take on alphabet books (the missing letters spell GUTSY and BRAVE) that is perfect for your little worrier.

Swan: The Life and Dance of Anna Pavlova.  This poetic biography of Anna Pavlova has the reader enter a winter wonderland.

See You Next Year.  The pleasures of visiting the same vacation spot year after year, thrown into greater relief by one change - the making of a new friend.

The Tea Party in the Woods.  In black-and-white-and-shades-of-gray with touches of red and yellow, this book tells the sotry of Kikko as she tries to bring a pie to Grandma through the woods. Sound familiar?  Not quite!  Betsy Bird wrote the perfect review.  

A Myriad, a Plethora, An Abundance of (Okay, Just Three) ... Books About Collective Nouns

From A Zeal of Zebras

I found A Zeal of Zebras: An Alphabet of Collective Nouns at a museum gift shop and was drawn in by the visually stunning cover.  As a word-lover, the topic of collective nouns also piqued my interest, and I was sold.  Although I wonder if these terms are ever actually used, their vivid imagery is irresistible.  I even picked up an adult version of this book and found gems such as "a squint of proofreaders!"   A Zeal of Zebras presents animals in alphabetical order and is as informative as it is gorgeous.

And you know how, once you notice something, it seems to be everywhere?  All of a sudden, I noticed books about collective nouns everywhere.

A flock of sheep from A Tower of Giraffes

A Tower of Giraffes: Animals in Groups takes the same tack, providing information about each animal and its community.  But while I loved the art (I dare you to not to touch the woolly-seeming sheep!), the animals seem arranged in no particular order and the book comes to an abrupt end.

An Ambush of Tigers: A Wild Gathering of Collective Nouns takes a completely different approach.  My wordplay-loving 7-year-old loved this rhyming book, which asks questions like "Would a labor of moles wear polka-dot ties when it goes to work for a business of flies?" and "When a murder of crows leaves barely a trace, is a sleuth of bears hot on the case?"  In a nice touch, it has a glossary which gives the alternate (more common) meaning for each word used to name an animal group.  Fun and funny, this is a more accessible introduction to collective nouns than a mere list.  But it lacks information about the animals and animal communities themselves, which is why these books work so well together.

A sleuth of bears

Interestingly enough, the books do not always use the same word for a group of animals.  An Ambush of Tigers and A Tower of Giraffes both feature flamingos  - but the former calls a group of them a bland "stand," whereas the latter identifies such a group as a much more vivid "flamboyance."  A romp of otters or a raft of them?



What is your favorite collective noun?

The Eternal Lament of the Letter Z

The letter Z has it hard, being stuck at the end of the alphabet.  Lots of alphabet books play with this theme, with Z and other letters towards the back of the alphabet wishing to be bumped up to the front of the line, among them Z is for Moose, A Call for A New Alphabet, and AlphaOops!: The Day Z Went First.  But who knew that Benjamin Franklin wrote a sketch suggesting exactly that?

In Jill Lepore's fascinating and beautifully written biography of Franklin's sister Jane, Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, she quotes from this very work, entitled The Petition of the Letter Z.  Franklin writes that Z laments "That he is not only plac'd at the Tail of the Alphabet, when he had as much Right as an other to be at the Head; but is, by the Injustice of his Enemies totally excluded from the Word WISE, and his place injuriously filled by a little, hissing, crooked, serpentine, venomous Letter called S."  Lepore writes that "The letter Z's petition is denied, however, the judges urging, 'that Z be admonished to be content with his Station, forbear Reflections upon his Brother Letters, & remember his own small Usefulness, and the little Occasion there is for him in the Republick of Letters, since S, whom he so despises, can well serve instead of him.'"

Franklin also developed a new alphabet, seeking to create a one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds.  That is, each letter would only make one sound (unlike c, as we use it) and each sound would only be represented by a single letter (that is, sounds like "ch" would not need to be represented by two letters).  Obviously, it never caught on.  But such an alphabet would have proved useful to those without formal education, like Franklin's sister Jane, as well as to those who, despite their education, find English spelling almost impossible.  Because the spelling of American English has changed over time, and because Jane Franklin's lack of a formal education meant her spelling was largely phonetic, Lepore writes in a note to the reader, "All original English spellings have been retained.  Spelling is part of the story."  I told you her writing was beautiful!  Even in a note to the reader.

And Z never seems to give up hope.

What other books do you know where Z seeks a more prominent position in the alphabet?

Truly Vintage Alphabet Books

Over the weekend we went to the New-York Historical Society Museum & Library (yes, they put a hyphen in New-York).  Our first stop was not the DiMenna Children's History Museum but a small exhibit on the fourth floor of a collection of not just model trains but all their accoutrements - train stations, miniature figurines, merry-go-rounds, and more.  There was a pamphlet available for a self-guided scavenger hunt and it was a blast.  Then we headed downstairs for the Children's Museum.  My older daughter loved it (her class has been having regular visits from an educator from the Society) but I was unimpressed, except by these vintage alphabet books and games.

There's a reason the Historical Society has been given the nickname "New York City's attic!"

ABC Books: Works of Art, Humor, or Pedagogy?

I love alphabet books.  Like certain poetry forms, the limits imposed by the form can be one of their strengths.  But they can also get repetitive and unoriginal.  For example, I thought the non-traditional alphabet books, Z is for Moose (reviewed here) and A Call for a New Alphabet were unique and funny.  In both of those, a letter towards or at the end of the alphabet wants to be moved up in the world.  But when I saw A is for Musk Ox and A is for Salad (which, to be fair, was published the earliest of the four mentioned here), I just thought, How many of these types of alphabet books do we need?!?   A is for Musk Ox follows the pattern of Z is for Moose and A Call for a New Alphabet, as the musk ox pastes the word musk ox over the correct word for each letter (e.g., on the cover you can see that it is covering up the word apple).  A is for Salad has an "incorrect" word choice for each letter... but a picture of an animal that does start with that letter eating or doing the "incorrect thing: e.g. the F page says "F is for soup" but depicts a frog eating that soup.  These books appeal to a very narrow audience - children who already know the alphabet and are old enough to get the joke, yet young enough not to be bored or turned off by an alphabet book.  These are works of humor more than teaching tools.



In The Absolutely Awful Alphabet by Mordicai Gerstein and An Annoying ABC by Barbara Bottner and illustrated by Michael Emberly, each letter does (or names a person who does) something bad to the next letter or person.



Denise Fleming's Alphabet Under Construction also has a plot, as a mouse creates each letter of the alphabet, airbrushing the A, gluing the G, kinking the K (my favorite) and finally zipping the Z.  I prefer these, as they do have a plot.  My favorite alphabet book with a plot is Alison Murray's Apple Pie ABC which I review here. 

There is room on the bookshelf, of course, for all types of alphabet books.  But not my bookshelf, in my small NYC apartment.  I'll stick to my old favorites, discussed here and here, many of which are works of art more than humor or pedagogy.  The rest I'll just borrow from the library.

What would make you buy an alphabet book?  Which would you buy as a gift?  To teach your own child?  For a classroom?  For a library?

Library Round-Up #5

Brief reviews of some of the books from our recent library haul:

How Many Jelly Beans? by Andrea Menotti.  Despite the rave reviews this one is getting, it just doesn't do it for me.  I know it's a concept book but still... a little more plot, please.  Not to mention that I don't understand the choice to write out many of the numbers rather than represent them numerically.  1,000 and 100,000 are shown numerically, but why not 10 and 1,000,000?  Seeing all those zeros is another way of getting the message across, not to mention it helps children associate the quantity with its numerical representation. Also, my daughter - the older one! - tore the giant gatefold the first time she opened it... it's really  just too big for kids to manage without guidance.  It is nice, though, that because of this book my 4-year-old grasped the idea that "The smaller they are, the more that fit on a page."  The way the idea of division was portrayed was great, too, with the idea of 1,000 jelly beans in a year being shown as 2 or 3 per day on calendar pages. 

Neville by Norton Juster.  My 4-year-old really likes this book about a boy who moves to a new town and uses an ingenious - or, depending on your perspective, strange and perhaps counterproductive - technique to make new friends.  To give it away, he goes around calling for Neville, who is, of course, himself.  I just don't get it.  What's going to happen tomorrow when all his new friends find out who he really is?

Z is for Moose by Kelly Bingham.  In the tradition of A Call for a New Alphabet, a letter towards - or at - the end of the alphabet wants to be moved up and just won't take no for an answer! 

Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco.  Not a new book, I put this one on hold when I saw it... somewhere!  My kids love it and now want me to try the cake recipe at the end... which calls for a rather strange secret ingredient.  Do I dare?

BookSpeak! by Laura Purdie Salas.  A great concept, these poems about books are a bit uneven in execution.  I liked Hydrophobiac, about a book's worst fear, and the one about bookplates the best.

Forget-Me-Nots: Poems to Learn by Heart edited by Mary Ann Hoberman.  I'm still on the hunt for the perfect poetry compilation or two to add to our collection and I don't think this one is it.  A nice enough collection but it didn't grab me.  I have the Random House Book of Poetry for Children on hold and I suspect it is going to be the winner.

Owen Foote, Second Grade Strongman by Stephanie Greene.  I requested this from the library because the author wrote the Posey books that my daughter loves.  I knew it was about a boy who is small for his age and wants to be stronger and bigger.  But even so I thought the idea of body image was handled without any subtlety.  To be fair, I stopped reading it to my daughter after chapter 2.  For a child with body image problems this might be a good choice, but for a child without one, it will only give him or her something new to worry about.

Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger. Beautiful but just not substantive enough to engage my girls.

Library Round-Up #4

This week's library haul in brief (some briefer than others):

Amelia and Eleanor Go For A Ride by Pam Munoz Ryan, pictures by Brian Selznick.  I found this book via Annie and Aunt (who currently have a great series of posts about books for the very earliest of emerging readers) and I can't say enough good things about it.  From the amazing black-and-white illustrations by yes, that Brian Selznick, to the wonderful writing, this book is a winner and perfect for Women's History Month.  It is not quite non-fiction, but is based on a true event and the author smartly includes a note at the end detailing what parts are true and where she took liberties.  Of course, it doesn't hurt that the story, about the friendship and adventures of two of the most admired women of the mid-twentieth century, provides great material.  This one's going on my to-buy list.  And now I'm interested in the author's book about Marian Anderson, too.

Posy by Linda Newbery and illustrated by Catherine Rayner.  This simple story about a cat's activities is elevated by the clever rhymes ("whiskers wiper/crayon swiper") and expressive illustrations.  I do wish, however, that the color palette had been enlivened a little.  The brown, black and light orange of the calico cat don't make for the brightest color scheme so less muted colors for the other items in the illustrations would have been nice.


Maudie and Bear by Jan Ormerod, illustrated by Freya Blackwood.  I can't decide what I think of this collection of five stories, well-regarded in its native Australia.  As the book jacket says, "Bear's world revolves around Maudie.  Maudie's world also revolves around Maudie."  The bear is clearly a stand-in for a parental figure and somewhat of a martyred one at that.  The sacrificial aspect and the second story, a take-off on the Three Bears which I think explores the guilt Goldilocks must have felt, don't sit right with me, but the quiet prose and illustrations are lovely.  I especially like how the illustrations, not the words, provide the punchlines in both The Bike Ride and Telling Stories.

Prudence Wants a Pet written by Cathleen Daly and illustrated by Stephen Michael King.  Another (I think Australian) book I'm ambivalent about.  Prudence wants a pet so desperately she adopts all kinds of inanimate objects until her parents finally succumb.  On a first reading, my girls thought the story was hysterical, but it didn't hold up as well upon rereading.  Truly clever moments (adopting a shoe and calling it Formal Footwear, since that is what it says inside) seem to highlight that the rest of the book falls short.  The part of the story about "sea buddies" was confusing to us (what are they exactly?  some type of plant?) and neither my girls or I were sure whether the pet at the end was a cat or a dog!  On the plus side, I love how the adults in the story are only depicted from the waist-down, a true child's eye view of the world (and reminiscent of the grown-ups in Charlie Brown).  Strangely, it is the third book I've read recently with inanimate objects as pets - the tween novel, When Life Gives You O.J. by Erica S. Perl and Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great by Judy Blume were the others.


Apple Pie ABC by Alison Murray.  I have a soft spot both for retro-looking illustrations and unique alphabet books and this book scores high  on both counts.  I can't think of another alphabet book that actually tells us a story like this one, although there must be one, right?  Also going on my to-buy list.




 
A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka.  Justly deserving of its Caldecott for the illustrations (I love the colors) but I found the plot of this wordless book a little thin.

My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother by Patricia Polacco.  A great semi-autobiographical book about sibling relationships with photos of the author and her real rotten redheaded older brother on the endpapers.

Listen to My Trumpet! by Mo Willems.  The latest in the Elephant and Piggie series, this one was definitely not my favorite.

Dumpling Days by Grace Lin.  The third book in Grace Lin's semi-autobiographical middle-grade series about Pacy Lin, a Taiwanese-American girl, which, like the first two (The Year of the Dog and The Year of the Rat), successfully explores immigrant identity and the difficulties of just growing up.  The kind and wise parents remind me of the Quimbys.  My only complaint is that the books are not very subtle, but that may be all for the best considering the target age group.

Have you or your kids read any of the above?  What did you think?

Alphabet Books for All Ages

While I loved the accurately self-described "retro-modern" art of Paul Thurlby's Alphabet, I was a little surprised when both my children did as well.  Usually I think of alphabet books as being geared towards younger children or being so sophisticated that they are really for adults.  But this one appealed to my 3-year-old, just because of her love of letters (she is learning to write and loves figuring out what letter a given word starts with) and the illustrations.  We had borrowed it from the library and when she received it as a gift she exclaimed, "I love this book!"  Meanwhile, my 6-year-old really appreciated the visual puns.  In this book, as is typical for alphabet books, each letter is assigned a word (e.g., A is for Awesome, etc.) but then, in a unique stroke, the picture depicting that word also incorporates the shape of the letter itself.  When my 6-year-old grasped that the arms "catching" the ball were shaped like the letter C, her face registered understanding and delight.  My favorite is J for Jazz, with a saxophone in the shape of the letter J.

A few weeks ago, my mom handed me Animalphabet, published by the Metropolitan Museum and which she bought for $4 at the Strand who-knows-when.  Thanks, Mom!  Here the puns are verbal (and, befitting the title, animal-related) and matched with works from the museum's collection.  So K is for Kitty Litter and is paired with a Currier & Ives painting of a cat and her kittens, a group of donkeys is an Ass-embly, and C shows the emblem of Luke the Evangelist, or a Holy Cow.  While this is more of an alphabet book for adults, I love having it in my collection.

What is your favorite alphabet book?

To Brooklyn... and Beyond!

Out of New York City's five boroughs, none has the same mystique as Brooklyn.  Its reputation precedes it, and whether it conjures up for you images of gritty urban life or hipster mecca depends on your frame of reference and which neighborhood (and era) you're talking about.  Once a city in its own right, Brooklyn still has an identity separate and apart from its role as a part of the city as a whole.  So it's only fitting that it should have an ABC book dedicated to it and it alone: The ABCs of Brooklyn, An Alphabet Guidebook for All Ages.  Currently the NYPL does not have it but I'm hoping the book's merit will triumph over inter-borough and inter-library system rivalries (Brooklyn has its own library system).  I learned about the book here (it's mentioned all the way at the end).   On the adult side of things, the New York Times has also recently run two reviews of Literary Brooklyn: The Writers of Brooklyn and the Story of American City Life by Evan Hughes.

Venturing beyond Brooklyn, the same blurb also mentions NYC ABC put out by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Not to be confused with ABC NYC: A Book About Seeing New York City, a worthy book in its own right, NYC ABC features New York City as depicted in works in the museum's collection.  ABC NYC, on the other hand, depicts each letter in alphabetical order as found somewhere in the city.  For parents, the article also mentions a tongue-in-cheek book, 101 Reasons to Leave New York by Howard Jordan. 

There are tons of other books which feature New York City generally or Brooklyn specifically.  Four of them are on my list of assigned reading for my husband:   A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg, Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk and Time and Again by Jack Finney.  I mention another New York City alphabet book as well as one featuring the local "fauna" here.  And of course, set in Brooklyn is the modern classic, Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale by Brooklyn resident Mo Willems and its sequels.

What are your favorite children's and adult books about or set in Brooklyn?  New York City?

Treasure Hunts

When we walk around our neighborhood, we see something you don't normally think of when you think of New York:  gargoyles.


Soup-eating, book-reading gargoyles!

 

And when Isabel Hill walks around New York, she sees animals.  Not real ones, but sculpted ones, hidden (to greater or lesser degrees) on buildings all over the city.  In Urban Animals, she takes us on a tour of her finds.  While the rhyming text is labored ("In this keystone with its tail in a curl/sits a busy city squirrel."), and the highlighting of architectural terms (defined in a glossary at the back of the book) is distracting, the photos themselves are compelling.  She includes a list cleverly titled "Animal Habitats" which gives the location of each animal depicted so the reader can follow in her footsteps (although the animals are located too far apart to see them all on the same trip).  And if you can't do that, or even if you can, you'll still be inspired to look a bit more closely at the buildings you pass each day.  Despite its flaws, this book will appeal to animal lovers, New York-ophiles and budding architecture buffs alike.

Stephen Johnson's Alphabet City and City by Numbers also prompt the reader to look at his or her environment from a new perspective.  In his paintings, the elements of city life suddenly reveal the shapes of letters and numbers, respectively.  My five-year-old, who until now had found these books boring, is suddenly fascinated by them.  I do wish Johnson had, like Hill, included a directory of where he found each of the images he chose.  While some are obvious (M is made with the arches of the Brooklyn Bridge, I'm pretty sure C is from the The Cathedral of St. John the Divine , just down the block from those gargoyles), others are impossible to place  (two floors of fire escape stairs form B, the three elements of a traffic light, when viewed in profile become E).  And are any of them actually in the New York City neighborhood known as Alphabet City?