Review by New York Times Review
THERE is no finer tradition in English-language education than transforming the letters of the alphabet into living, breathing objects of fun. Those of us who came of age in the 1970s and '80s may suppose that "Sesame Street" invented the concept - we might well be called Generation X because so many of us remember the letter X appearing in Muppet form on Guy Smiley's "Mystery Guest" game show. In fact, alphabetic anthropomorphism predates Jim Henson's furry crew by a couple of centuries. In "The Story of A," a fascinating look at "the alphabetization of America," Patricia Crain dates the presence of lively alphabet books for children to the 18th century: "From 1750 on," Grain writes, "the alphabet was dressed up and decked out, animated, ornamented, narrated, and consumed." Alphabet books and primers written expressly for children formed a new secular literary genre, often sold by peddlers to reach a mass audience, and designed to lure young readers into the joys of literacy. One of the earliest, "The Child's New Play-Thing," contains two highly animated alphabet rhymes: "A was an Archer" and "A Apple Pye" ("B bit it / C cut it / D divided it"). Each generation since has had its own personified alphabets. More recent touchstones include the raucous tree-climbing letters of "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" and the insatiable E of "E Eats Everything," one of the droll music videos created for the album "Here Come the ABCs," by They Might Be Giants. The latest entries in this tradition find new ways to enliven A to Z. Tom Lichtenheld's "E-mergency!" imagines the letters sharing a house - the book has its origin in a short animated video, "Alphabet House" by Ezra Fields-Meyer, a remarkably creative -autistic 14-year-old. Lichtenheld came across the video on YouTube and was inspired to write and illustrate "E-mergency!" in Ezra's whimsical style. In Lichtenheld's telling, the alphabet enters crisis mode after the letter E suffers an accident on the stairs. All the others pitch in, with O enlisted to fill in so E can get better - make that "got bottor." Every page is chock-full of inventive letter-play, sometimes winking more to parent than child. (At one point, J looks in the mirror and asks, "Does this serif make my butt look big?") But the book quickly became a favorite of my alphabetically obsessed 5-year-old, who even enjoyed the endpaper illustration ranking the frequency of each letter's usage in the English language. "Operation Alphabet," written by Al MacCuish, similarly adorns letters with cartoonish faces and limbs, but this British import carries a whiff of Harry Potter by placing the alphabetic actors in the top-secret Ministry of Letters. When the little boy Charlie Foxtrot has trouble learning the alphabet at school, the ministry's Special Alphabet Service comes to save the day. Simply getting to Charlie's house is an adventure in itself, with the letters embarking on a perilous train ride in which a gallant duchess must rescue them from an alphabet-hungry cat. This book, too, will appeal as much to parents as to children, with Luciano Lozano's stylish illustrations recalling vintage graphic imagery of the '50s and '60s. What better way to have children identify with the alphabet than to make each letter stand for a child? In "An Annoying ABC," by Barbara Bottner, A to Z are represented by a classroom of rambunctious students from Adelaide to Zelda (with their teacher, Miss Mabel, as the central M, presiding over the chaos). Tiger-suited Adelaide annoys Bailey, and Bailey blames Clyde, setting into motion a domino effect of juvenile pandemonium that can be resolved only by returning to A, with apologies all around. All 26 characters are rendered by Michael Emberley with distinctive charm, using watercolor and pencil to move the action along fluidly from scene to scene. In "Max's Castle," by Kate Banks, the letters are simply letters, yet become ingenious tools for sparking a child's imagination. Young Max pulls out some old alphabet blocks from under his bed and decides to build a castle, despite initial skepticism from his older brothers, Benjamin and Karl. As with previous collaborations between Banks and the bold illustrator Boris Kulikov ("Max's Words," "Max's Dragon"), words become magical amulets that transmogrify the world around Max. Anything can happen in the castle Max constructs, simply by manipulation of the letters on the blocks. When the brothers spot pirates, in the form of a ship made from the letters P-I-R-A-T-E-S, Max defuses the situation by rearranging the blocks into RAT PIES. They are saved from a deadly ADDER with the addition of an L, which turns the snake into a LADDER and brings them to safety. Children who enjoy tinkering with words as Max does may end up in the realm of anagrams, palindromes, word squares and other ways of "making the alphabet dance," to quote the title of one wordplay anthology. Letters need not be mere vehicles for literacy, as these books demonstrate. They can be the very stuff of creativity, rooted in the age-old impulse to make the alphabet our plaything. Ben Zimmer, the former On Language columnist for The Times Magazine, is the executive producer of VisualThesaurus.com and Vocabulary.com.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 13, 2011]
Review by Booklist Review
It was a quiet morning until . . . / Adelaide annoyed Bailey. / Bailey blamed Clyde . . . The result is a chain reaction of trouble that eventually reaches everyone in Miss Mabel's class, from Adelaide to Zelda. Then, with a fine sense of justice (not to mention the garden hose), Zelda zaps Adelaide out on the playground. Soon every classmate is drenched, but Miss Mabel steps in with towels and good sense. At her teacher's urging, Adelaide apologizes to Bailey, who apologizes to Clyde, beginning a chain reaction that restores harmony to the class. The opening endpapers and pages feature the children quietly walking into school in line, with their names (and the appropriate letters of the alphabet) appearing in order. The book ends on a more boisterous line of kids cavorting as they leave school, with appropriate but now out-of-order letters above their heads. While the story's concept may not be entirely new, the text and especially the expressive pencil-and-watercolor illustrations are fresh, engaging, and wonderfully amusing.--Phelan, Carolyn Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Anyone who thinks life is a breeze for abecedarians should check out this knowing and very funny primer from Bottner and Emberley, whose previous pairing resulted in the wonderful Miss Brooks Loves Books! (And I Don't). The book describes, in alphabetical order, a chain reaction of unpleasant and unfortunate behavior. "It was a quiet morning until... Adelaide annoyed Bailey. Bailey blamed Clyde. Clyde cried. Dexter drooled on Eloise. Eloise elbowed Flora," and so on until the action comes full circle with Zelda, pushed to the edge by a clumsy Yves, "zap[s]" Adelaide with a hose. Is there any hope for this living alphabet of woe? Yes, thanks to Miss Mabel, the savvy, supportive teacher whose name puts her smack in the middle of it all. Expertly implementing a chain of apologies, Miss Mabel achieves the classroom equivalent of a State Department peace accord: a tranquil story hour (the featured book is Miss Brooks). Bottner's deadpan, minimalist text inspires Emberley to some terrific portraits in extremis-this isn't just an alphabet book, it's an encyclopedia of kindergarten deportment, from aggression to zealotry. Ages 2-6. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 1-Miss Mabel's class roll includes an alphabetical assortment of children's names. Readers meet each child in consecutive order, unfortunately engaged in a domino effect of unneighborly behavior. "It was a quiet morning until. Adelaide annoyed Bailey. Bailey blamed Clyde. Clyde cried. Dexter drooled on Eloise. Eloise elbowed Flora. Flora fumed," etc. The great chain of misbehavior culminates in Adelaide's head-to-toe soaking, having been "zapped" by Zelda with a hose. Everyone is astonished, and, finally, everyone apologizes. Emberley keeps the action rolling along with his horizontal chain of charismatic youngsters, set against long white pages and illustrated in his sketchlike pencil-and-watercolor style. He has a knack for portraying each child's emotion in all its precocious intensity. Touches of whimsy, such as Adelaide's tiger costume and Miss Mabel's floral tank top over cargo shorts over polka-dot leggings ensemble, keep the whole crew endearing despite the chaos. Each letter is highlighted by a colored box, but a swiftly moving narrative that practically demands the insertion of a few sound effects during read-aloud broadens the appeal of this ABC beyond mere concept book. While storytime audiences will appreciate this well-paced tale, individual children may wish to slow down and take a closer look at Emberley's spunky classmates than a large group reading would allow. Fortunately, the whole effect is much more pleasing than annoying.-Jayne Damron, Farmington Community Library, MI (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
The only order in this disorderly classroom is the alphabetical arrangement of misbehaving students, beginning with Adelaide who annoys Bailey who in turn blames Clyde who cries while Dexter drools on Eloise who elbows Flora. "Flora fumed." The pandemonium continues on through Z, which shows Zelda zapping Adelaide by spraying her with a garden hose on the school playground, causing Adelaide to apologize for starting it all. The multicultural cast of twenty-five students engages in refreshingly childlike actions and reactions, which all add up to a whole lot of slapstick fun. Their low-key teacher Miss Mabel, representing the letter M, is either incapable of or not interested in teaching them to "use their words," and we are all the richer for it. Emberley's cartoon line drawings wi h watercolor are expertly designed to draw the eye across the page from left to right, and they offer picture clues about what might happen next. An amusing visual subplot follows the antics of the classroom's pet mouse, who escaped when Adelaide first annoyed Bailey and was, in fact, the true instigator of the classroom chaos. kathleen t. horning (c) Copyright 2011. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
What's annoying? Adelaide annoys Bailey when she runs at him wearing her tiger costume, scaring him and causing him to let the gerbil out of its cage.So begins a rollicking preschool/early-elementary romp featuring kids who appear in alphabetical order with a corresponding action as Adelaide sets off a domino effect. "Bailey blamed Clyde. / Clyde cried. / Dexter drooled on Eloise. / Eloise elbowed Flora. / Flora fumed." The pandemonium that ensues is a clever visual narrative loaded with details, such as the gerbil-escape subplot. The hilarity lies in the illustrations, typical Emberley style, done in mechanical pencil and watercolors. Children (and Miss Mabel, the teacher) in the alphabetical spotlight are rendered in full color, while the other characters are in black and white against colored backgrounds. The kids sport a variety of skin colors, hairdos and clothing, with one girl (Ida) in a wheelchair. How does the mayhem resolve? When Zelda zaps Adelaide with the water hose, Adelaide, as instigator, apologizes, and so does everyone else. For the trickier letters, Q is Quentin; X is Xavier; Y is Yves. One read-through will simply not be enough to enjoy all the fun. This would make a splendid project for a classroom to make up their own alphabetical list of names.A is for one awesome, amusing, antic alphabet book. (Alphabet picture book. 4-8)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
