You've never seen an alphabet book like this before. A is for alligator, but the accompanying picture is composed of hundreds of uppercase and lowercase black A's. Each page contains an animal-bat, camel, dog, elephant- rendered entirely in its initial letters. The giraffe's neck is so tall, the head is gate-folded on the top and the legs accordioned on the bottom to accommodate it. My favorite is the two-page octopus partly covered by two turquoise curvy panels that look like ocean waves. They open up on the bottom and side to reveal four undulating tentacles, all done with O's in the Bodoni Poster font. "Oooooh," viewers will say, appropriately. At the bottom or side of the page are teasers-examples of other typefaces, and little pictures made out of a single letter, like the cat drawn from the side of a capital C, which becomes the cat's back and tail.
THEMES: ANIMALS. PICTURE BOOKS FOR OLDER READERS.
You've never seen an alphabet book like this before. A is for alligator, but the accompanying picture is composed of hundreds of uppercase and lowercase black A's. Each page contains an animal-bat, camel, dog, elephant- rendered entirely in its initial letters. The giraffe's neck is so tall, the head is gate-folded on the top and the legs accordioned on the bottom to accommodate it. My favorite is the two-page octopus partly covered by two turquoise curvy panels that look like ocean waves. They open up on the bottom and side to reveal four undulating tentacles, all done with O's in the Bodoni Poster font. "Oooooh," viewers will say, appropriately. At the bottom or side of the page are teasers-examples of other typefaces, and little pictures made out of a single letter, like the cat drawn from the side of a capital C, which becomes the cat's back and tail.
Here is a book that can be examined on different levels. Preschoolers will love the animals, the shapely fold-out pages, and the pictures made up of letters. Older children will marvel over the graphic cleverness. High school students on the yearbook committee may pick up some innovative design ideas. For an alphabetical art project, print out giant letters on your computer, one per page, using different fonts for each. Have children take a letter, pick an animal or object that starts with that letter, and design a picture incorporating the letter. Or they can create their own typefaces, freehand, and name them. Check out the incorporation of wild and jazzy typefaces to illustrate key words in Nina Laden's picture book, The Night I Followed the Dog, a format writers can incorporate into their own stories. For older readers, grades 5 and up, the concrete poems in Technically, It's Not My Fault and its companion, Blue Lipstick, will get kids thinking about the form and function of letters.
THEMES: ANIMALS. PICTURE BOOKS FOR OLDER READERS.
