Norman Messenger

This book presents each letter of the alphabet (both upper and lower case) as an artist might fancifully conceptualize them. For instance, coiled snakes make up the letter Q while twisty twine constructs a letter T. As you can see by these two examples, the pictured item does not necessarily begin with the letter shown, which is rather different than your standard alphabet book. There are no words on the page spreads, just the illustrations and the printed letters. While this is a neat book to look at, it may not fit everyone's needs. I could almost see this being of more interest to a high school art class for inspiration than for a preschool classroom learning the alphabet.… (more)

I was disappointed in this. I thought that I would love it. I did like it but I didn’t think it was great.

I appreciate how both capital and lower case versions are shown for each letter.

I can’t say that I was a fan of the art style but I loved some of the creativity shown in making the letters. Some pairs/letters were better than others. There were a few genius pairs and one where I couldn’t even see the capital letter for the pair (N) no matter how hard I tried. I think my favorite was for the letter Ii: a scroll for the capital I and a pen with an ink splotch for the lower case i. L was also good: a boot for L and a new pair of shoelaces for l.

For me the most disappointing thing is I’d assumed the art objects and their letters would have some connection. They don’t at all. That is fine but for those learning their letters and learning to read doing that and using phonics would have added some usefulness to the book.

I love the premise and it is a beautiful book but it’s barely a 3 star book for me. (I see that many here disagree.)

I think that it’s best for children who already know their alphabet. The endpapers do have multiple capital letters all over them and I guess they could be compared to the artsy versions in the book proper.… (more)