The Invisible Alphabet

Gr 2-5–This picture book asks readers to take a deep breath about their preconceived notions about the ABCs. “D is for Delayed. E is for Erased.” What is not seen is at the center of the conceit, so that words live just enough in the abstract to delight more advanced thinkers, but will paralyze young children. Bewildered fish in a bowl of water with miniature shipwrecks stand in for C, for “Clear.” “J is for Just missed it,” as a gent with flowers and a musician chase the bus. “O is for out,” with an empty box of cereal (and we don’t see a person, but a bowl and spoon is at the ready, so why not H for “hungry”? The correlations between event or notion and the word choice are often outright arbitrary, sometimes hinting at a bigger story—“Y is for Yesterday” shows a white boy beaming and covered in bandages, perhaps recalling adventures in skateboarding from the day before. It’s a cynical packaging of a random collection of words that leaves out order, arc, momentum, story, or sense—something “microscopic,” for M, is actually visible in a way that “Just missed it” is not. The mood is portentous and points toward a disaster that never arrives: Gone. Hidden. Lost. Nothing. Popped (a balloon). A happy scene of a smiling Black child who has just blown out her birthday candles (“X is for eXtinguished”) follows a possible drowning, and T is for “too late,” when a child and parent arrive at a bus stop.