Great for early elementary school age kids who are learning to sound out words and spell, this alphabet book focuses more on the individual objects than learning the ABCs. Each page is filled with a certain number of images that start with the given letter and it's up to you to find them all! Kids will love the challenge of locating 47 objects that start with 'S' and other letter-number combinations. The pages are filled with colorful artwork and often silly drawings, such as an ant playing an accordion or a walrus being a waitress serving waffles.
Parents will love that their children enjoy an educational book while kids will be having so much fun that they won't even realize they're learning valuable lessons. With a little help, younger kids can also partake in the fun of the story and help to find objects or even simply find the letter, upper-and lower-case, hidden on the page. This book is a great vocabulary building tool and helps kids to think outside the box to find all the hidden objects.
When I shared this story with Emily, the three-year-old girl I babysit, she was fascinated by the illustrations. We talked about the letters and practiced telling them apart but at the pre-preschool age, she wasn't able to get the full benefit of the book. However, over the next couple of years, she'll undoubtedly understand the rest of the book and will likely revisit it with a new perspective.
--Abby
John Nickle is a respected illustrator of several children's books. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with one wife, four cats, and one dog.
I have a very smart four year old that knows all of her letters and numbers. Unfortunately she doesn't enunciate very well and she has a high squeaky voice that makes her almost impossible to understand. But when she sat down with this book and started going through the pages, she became a little bit easier to understand. Repeating the same first sound over and over really seemed to help her. And she loves the pictures! She thinks they are so funny.
--Alena Telford, One Day at a Time