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?

Book Fair Mea Culpa

The books I bought at the school book fair.

Classics, good.

Elephant and Piggie, good.
Lego and Star Wars, bad.

I was wrong.  I was $205.20 wrong.  That's how much I spent at the school book fair.  (To justify it to myself,  I donated some of the books I purchased to either the school library or my daughters' classroom libraries.)  The quality of the books was, overall, top-notch.  Yes, there were the usual character-driven books, especially for boys (Star Wars, Ninja-something-or-other, Lego).  But the vast majority were high-quality books (both in terms of literary and physical quality, both of which are lacking with Scholastic book fairs), including both classics and new releases, including many of which I, who spends her days reading book reviews, book blogs and scouring bookstores, had never seen or heard of before.  The book fair was run by Main Street Book Company, a book fair company, which gets books from many different publishers.  It even provided a few adult titles, including cookbooks, which I thought was a nice touch.  Main Street Book Company is apparently also a provider of specifically Jewish book fairs as well.  Who knew?  I didn't even know that such companies existed.  For those of you seeking to improve your own school book fairs, the parent-organizers of ours told me they were very pleased with the service.

Full reviews will have to wait, as we haven't had a chance to even read them yet, but here's what I bought for ourselves and some initial thoughts:

Greek Myths by Ann Turnbull.  I'm particularly excited about this well-reviewed collection of Greek myths, as it fills a gap in our home library.  I may also supplement it with this version for younger children.

My five-year-old's wish list

The Barefoot Book of Mother and Daughter Tales by Josephine Everts-secker.  I'm intrigued.  And their books are always so beautiful.

The Barefoot Book of Father and Daughter Tales by Josephine Everts-secker.  Ditto.

Lifetime: The Amazing Numbers in Animal Lives  by Lola Schaefer.  As I paged through this quickly between my two parent-teacher conferences, I worried that this beautiful book might be too simplistic for my math lover.  But then I spied the notes at the end, which explain  concepts like averages, and decided to go for it.

Thomas Jefferson Builds a Library by Barb Rosenstock.  All I had to see was "library" in the title and I was sucked in.  Not to mention it was on my five-year-old's wish list.

My five-year-old's wish list, continued

My Dad Thinks He's Funny by Katrina Germein.  My husband and the father of my children does think he's funny.  And he is.  How could I resist?

The Relatives Came  by Cynthia Rylant.  A classic.  And so much better than the early readers she seems to churn out daily.

About Time: A First Look at Time and Clocks by Bruce Koscielniak.  Perfect for my daughter who's interested in time and time zones.  I don't know this author at all but his other books look equally fascinating, including one about Gutenberg and the printing press.

AlphaOops!: The Day Z Went First by Alethea Kontis.  Another book in which Z complains about being last.  Look for an upcoming post about a 200+ year-old version of this lament.

Winter Trees by Carole Gerber.  This beautiful book looks like a nice complement to the equally stunning Fall Walk by Virginia Brimhall Snow, which I recently purchased.

Heidi by Johanna Spyri.  A classic.

The Magic Half by Annie Barrows.  By the same author as the Ivy and Bean series.  Selected by my 8-year-old.

So, what did you or your children buy at their school book fair this year?

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.