Gr 1–4—Jeffers's empathic nature, evident from his sympathetic renderings of Drew Daywalt's beleaguered crayons in
The Day the Crayons Quit (Philomel, 2013), here extends to the hardworking letters. This eccentric and entertaining anthology is introduced by an eloquent syllogism about the relationship of letters, words, and stories. While each four-page tale showcases a (seemingly) hand-drawn capital and lowercase letter, and many of the words—and unnamed objects—begin with the corresponding letter, this is not your mother's abecedarium. It is a framework for Jeffers's intriguing worldview, combining ludicrous juxtapositions and situations and a great capacity for gentleness. Some passages are scientific: "Mary is made of matter….she got sucked through a microscope and became the size of a molecule." The facing page shows Mary floating under the lens. The blackboard-style background is filled with "molecular" diagrams (mattresses, a moose, mums). Other sections are a mite macabre: "Jack Stack the Lumberjack has been struck by lightning one hundred and eleven times…." The lightning illuminates a skeleton, but after the page turn, the man appears in his jammies, normal, except that he can provide his own electricity. There is humor in the alliteration and mixed-media scenes: a puzzled parsnip, Victor the vanquished "plotting his vengeance," and an enigma featuring elephants and envelopes. The author respects his readers' intelligence, inserting expansive vocabulary, cameos from characters in previous books, people and plot threads that cross stories, and quiet details to discover in subsequent readings. An altogether stimulating, surprising, and satisfying reading experience.—
Wendy Lukehart, District of Columbia Public LibraryEach letter gets its own story in this inventive collection of (sometimes) interlocking four-page tales, from A (for astronaut Edmund, afraid of heights) to Z (for the zeppelin Edmund flies four feet above the ground). Jeffers's loose cartoon style lends itself to visual humor. Although alphabet books are usually for younger children, it's older kids who will delight here in the clever concepts.
Each letter of the alphabet gets its own little story in this picture book that is much more than a simple set of ABCs. Whimsical, funny, occasionally tragic, and highly entertaining, this collection of (sometimes) interlocking tales is brilliantly inventive, from A (for astronaut Edmund, who is afraid of heights) to Z (for the zeppelin Edmund flies four daring feet above the ground). Jeffers's loose cartoon style lends itself to visual humor, with lots of sight gags delivered through line and color, such as daredevil Delilah boldly confronting all danger except the bellowing of her father when she's late for dinner. The stories are each four pages long and made up of just a few sentences, which often feature alliteration: "Mary is made of matter. So is her mother. And her mother's moose." The pictures frequently incorporate more words in bubbles, captions, and labels. Each letter brings its own delights, whether it is robots who steal rain clouds because they don't like getting wet or the enigmatic letter Q, in which a uniformed man searches around, under, and behind the book's pages for a missing question. Although alphabet books are usually for younger children, it's older kids who will delight here in the cleverness of the concepts and their execution. susan dove lempke
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