Book post: ABC

Book cover from Penguin

Jay, A. (2003). ABC: A child's first alphabet book. New York, NY: Dutton Children's Books.

This beautifully illustrated alphabet books has many things going for it. The colors are calming and the pictures are detailed but simple. I love the "crackle" effect that each page has; after looking at a few more books illustrated by Alison Jay, I realized this is her style. It gives the pictures a somewhat antique look. Each page features the next letter in the alphabet, with the uppercase and lowercase, and a brief sentence such as "c is for cow." One fun thing I noticed is that even though the cow may be the main "c" on the page, it includes many more things that begin with that page's letter (chickens, car, cabbages, cat). This would be fun for children learning to read, because they could have a challenge to find all the words that begin with the letter on the page. Even more sneaky of Jay is that she puts the next letter's featured picture somewhere on the page (the d page's dog is on the c page). I didn't realize this until I was on page "o," but once I did, it was fun to go back and find them all!