by Roger Sutton
The first step toward reading is spotting letter shapes and giving them names. Flash cards would get the job done, but where’s the fun? It’s much more interesting to find letters in the world around you. Stephen T. Johnson and Zoran Milich both provide this chance, showing letters found in cityscapes. Johnson’s Alphabet City employs spectacularly photorealistic paintings, some of which require a sharp eye to spot the letter. Milich’s black-and-white photos in his The City ABC Book offer a little more help for beginners by overlaying red to emphasize each letter. Neither book attempts to tie the shapes to words that begin with those letters — we’re not ready for that yet. In the now-classic Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault also refrain from tying letters to words, but they add a simple story to the mix, along with rhythm and rhyme. The action-filled plot even brings in the lowercase letters — as the children of the uppercase ones, of course. Lois Ehlert illustrates the raucous goings-on with cutout letters that remain easily recognizable despite some bending and manipulating to add character.
Once all those letters can be named without trouble, children are ready for books that partner each letter with a word. Easy nouns in the A for Apple, B for Bear vein are best — easiest for beginners to decipher in the accompanying illustrations. It’s also a good idea for the letter to match its most common spoken sound: C for Cat works better than C for Cygnet. If you are ready for a little action, however, Denise Fleming’s Alphabet under Construction is worth a look. Demonstrating craft-related verbs, a group of mice Airbrushes, Buttons, and Carves a giant alphabet. Books like Woodleigh Hubbard’s C Is for Curious: An ABC of Feelings pose a problem. Not only are emotions much more difficult to illustrate nonambiguously than nouns, or even verbs, but children’s available vocabulary for feelings and emotions is limited. Hubbard is forced to place xenophobic and yucky side by side. Ouch.
Alphabet books constructed around a theme helpfully provide an extra clue for deciphering the words in question. Jerry Pallotta is the king of this subgenre, with more than twenty titles (The Beetle Alphabet Book; The Underwater Alphabet Book) to his name. If you can match the theme to a child’s particular interest, then you may have a winner, but his books tend to be wordy and rather earnest. Fortunately, there are plenty of other choices in theme-driven ABC books. Try Lois Ehlert’s Eating the Alphabet. Showing both common and unusual items from the produce section (Swiss chard, spinach, star fruit), Ehlert’s brightly colored collage illustrations make even ugli fruit look appealing.
Recently we’ve seen a trend toward oversize, action-packed alphabet books presumably geared toward boys — though we could all use a little adrenaline now and then. Chris L. Demarest has two of these: Alpha Bravo Charlie with a military theme and the self-explanatory Firefighters A to Z. Brian Floca’s The Racecar Alphabet satisfies the need for speed, and Bob McLeod’s SuperHero ABC is full of muscles, Lycra, and unexpected humor: “Huge Man is Happy to Help Heroes and never Harms Humans,” but “He’s not exactly Handsome . . . even His Hands are Hairy!”
For children suffering from alphabet anxiety, a shot of humor can save the day. Plenty of books simply incorporate humor into the art, like Mike Lester’s A Is for Salad. Lester lets the child feel smarter than the book, with a silly text that gets each letter wrong. The first image shows an alligator eating a salad, hence, “A is for salad.” Next, a beaver in a Viking outfit (“B is for Viking”), a cat eating a hot dog (“C is for hot dog”) and so on. With great comic timing, Lester breaks his pattern near the end: “X and Y are not important letters. Never use them. And Z is for . . . The End” (showing a zebra’s hindquarters).
Ah, yes, we had to come to them sometime: those problematic late letters. An alphabet book is only as good as its weakest link, aka the X page. Many a book starts off well only to falter as it grapples with Q, X, and Z — letters worth lots of points in Scrabble but the very devil for alphabet-book creators. Books with themes and plots seem to have the toughest time here, making desperate attempts to plunk a xylophone or X-ray into the story. Some just settle for words that start with an “ex” sound (eXtreme, eXcellent). Not only is this cheating — as every child knows — but it can lead to confusion between letters and sounds. One way around this is to present a story in which unusual animals or children’s names are used. Joseph Slate and Ashley Wolff do this in their clever Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten and its sequels, with twenty-six animal classmates including Xavier, Yolanda, and Zach. Peter Catalanotto spins this device on its head in Matthew A.B.C. All of Mrs. Tuttle’s students are (inexplicably) named Matthew, but she has no problem telling them apart: “Matthew A. is extremely affectionate. Matthew B. loves Band-Aids. Matthew C. has friendly cowlicks,” and so forth.
Max’s ABC by Rosemary Wells is one of the more successful plot-driven alphabet books to come out in recent years. The ants in Max’s ant farm escape and go looking for his birthday cake. Unlike many plotted ABC books whose stories swerve off course in an attempt to maintain a strict pattern using each letter within a short space, Wells’s text sounds completely unforced. The relevant initial letters are shown in boldface, and some pages have only one alphabet word within several lines of text. The reader becomes so caught up in the conflict between big sister Ruby (trying to clean up and exterminate the ants) and Max (thwarting her every attempt) that it would be easy to forget this is an alphabet book. In the end, “‘Gone forever!’ said Ruby. ‘X marks the spots where the ants used to be!’ But inside the vacuum bag the ants were enjoying cake and toast. ‘Yum Yum Yum,’ said the ants.” Max dumps them out of the bag, and they walk back to the ant farm, exhausted, for some well-deserved sleep: “ZZZZZ!”
An excellent alphabet book that’s also a terrific bedtime book is Judy Sierra and Melissa Sweet’s The Sleepy Little Alphabet (see illustration on next page). Happily reminiscent of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom in its energy and humor, it features rambunctious little letters who resist their parents’ attempts to get them to bed (“h tries standing on her head. i and j jump on the bed”) but eventually begin to succumb (“q is quiet as a bunny”). Inevitably, it wraps up the alphabet with yawns and zzz’s — but ends on an optimistic “See you in the morning, abc’s!”
Alphabet books that are used to introduce another language are usually intended for an audience older than the standard two- to five-year-olds. Muriel and Tom Feelings’s Swahili alphabet book, Jambo Means Hello, works best with children who have mastered the English language alphabet book form. But Laura Rankin’s The Handmade Alphabet, showing each letter, an object (asparagus, bubbles, cup), and a hand forming the letter in American Sign Language, is presented so clearly and cleverly that it can work on multiple levels without fear of intimidation.
Illustrators have long been known to have fun with alphabet books’ venerated form. The simple rules (twenty-six subjects over thirty-two pages) allow them to enjoy a satisfying creative experience that showcases the picture book as object and art form. Without the distractions of plot and character, each page turn and each pattern that is set up (and sometimes playfully broken) become all-important. It seems odd to list an alphabet book’s level as “all ages,” but some of the most graphically exciting alphabet books do just that, holding some usefulness for letter learners but greater appeal for older kids. David Pelletier’s The Graphic Alphabet tackles the daunting task of manipulating each letterform to illustrate a noun or verb beginning with that letter. His A crumbles at the top, causing an avalanche; his sideways B is a series of dotted lines indicating the path of a bouncing ball. Lisa Campbell Ernst uses sideways letters, too, but hers are the result of the reader turning the book around. The Turn-Around, Upside-Down Alphabet Book shows a single letter on each square page with text circling it to describe what the letter looks like from each angle. For example, “E dreams of being” (turn the book ninety degrees clockwise) “an electric plug” (turn another ninety degrees so it is upside down), “a number three” (turn again), “candles on a birthday cake.”
> So what makes a good alphabet book? It all depends on what you are ready for. From letter learners to fluent readers to puzzle lovers, the menu is large enough to suit every palate.
When I was a child, books published in the United States were difficult to come by in New Zealand, dominated as it was by its trading relationship with Britain. But by the time I came to read to my daughters, the publishing world had changed. I was able to read them Blueberries for Sal (by the American Robert McCloskey) as well as Peter Rabbit.
Now, reading to grandchildren, I read newer authors. I read New Zealand writers whose stories make the immediate environment of the listening children replete with imaginative possibility. I also read them The Stinky Cheese Man, Jumanji, and Julius, the Baby of the World from signed copies acquired at library conferences.
But sometimes, as I read familiar tales to my grandchildren, I weep. One such book, Honey Bear by Dixie Willson, was given to me by an aunt in 1939. It is a sweet, rather sentimental story, though mysterious and humorous, too. I read Honey Bear to my grandchildren and cry as I read, not because of its sentiment but because of its accumulated power. By now there is more to the story than words, pages, and pictures. The voices of my dead parents come to me out of the story, setting up profound sympathetic resonance in that echoing inner library, both voices mingling with mine as I read, yet again, this little-known book.
It was mysterious then, and it is still mysterious today, and the children I read it to watch my face as I read and stare at my tears — those outer signs of the power of the story working in an individual consciousness — with wonder.
I don’t know that my children would agree — and I am not consulting them to find out — but high on the list of favorite read-aloud books in the house where I was the mommy was The Runaway Bunny. As a mother; as a pillow to the warm, small, nestling body; as reader aloud, that book satisfied. The rhythmic prose, the colorful illustrations, the balanced structure of the story — all of those contributed to our pleasure. For myself, also, there was the thought-provoking content of the book — the mother bunny who was so reassuringly always present. Or was it smotheringly always present? Or merely inescapably? Was I oversensitive to feel a kind of chill when I read the mother bunny’s promise, “I will be the wind and I will blow you where I want you to go”? Was I over-identifying with the child beside me in her/his longing to escape that overflowing, overwhelming Mother? The question the book raises is: What about love?
There are no answers offered, unless in the final line of the story, after the little bunny has remarked, “Shucks. I might as well stay here and be your little bunny.” The mother responds — lovingly, patiently, wisely, victoriously, smugly, and above all enigmatically: “Have a carrot.”
Have a carrot, I say to my children, and they understand everything I mean. To our children, to their parents, that line constitutes a family cord. It pulls us together, and that is one of the answers about love, isn’t it?
So begins the classic version of “The Three Little Pigs,” a nursery tale that may not prove to be as familiar as you think it is. As the great folklorist Joseph Jacobs told it (in English Fairy Tales, 1890), it’s just right for small children — lively with action, with repetitive patterns of language and incident and a villain whose fate precisely fits his crime: in the end, the wolf is eaten, by his third intended victim.
Citing Halliwell’s Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales as his source, Jacobs added that the story has few parallels (in contrast to, say, “Cinderella,” with its thousand variants). However, Jacobs’s pigs have inspired dozens of subsequent versions, with pictures from many excellent illustrators and retellings in as many flavors as an ice-cream shop — traditional or revisionist, comic or didactic, simplified or elaborated, bowdlerized, truncated, popularized, fractured, restructured, or postmodern.
How, then, does the purist’s concern — to respect the “original” — apply? Normally, it’s nice to find a nod to the new version’s source, a note on how it’s been adapted, along with the adapter’s rationale. But with a story as well known as this one, demanding full disclosure may be unnecessarily pedantic. What we really care about is what goes for any picture book: a good story with good illustrations, to which we might add, in this case, some respectful remnants of the story’s original genius, like its pattern, its patter, or its pacing.
But what’s it about, really, this story? Most of the characters get eaten! Is it OK to use it with kids?
Yes, of course it is, but deciding which editions are most appropriate depends on how the stories are told and on the nature of the audience. What, for example, do they know of pigs? In times past, a pig was commonly raised for meat on a farm. As Huck Finn observed, “There was generly [sic] hogs in the garden, and people driving them out.” This traditional tale comes from that kind of rural culture, where many did need to seek their fortunes, a quest not all would survive. In the 1920s, progressive educators deplored “violent” folklore. Their concern persists; yet twenty-first-century kids, most of whom know nothing of real farm animals (or their necessary ends) routinely zap characters on-screen. Charlotte’s death is sad, yet natural; but to have Wilbur suffer his threatened fate would be unbearable: we know him so well. But in “The Three Little Pigs,” we don’t know the first two pigs at all; they’re generically happy-go-lucky. What delights us about the third pig is the way he outwits the wolf. One four-year-old had a typically childlike reaction: “Well! If the wolf ate the first two pigs, and the other pig ate the wolf, he ate the first two pigs, too, didn’t he?” Zap!
For that little boy, the story was about the rules of the game — and about winning by guile. For someone else it might be justice, or the relief (or thrill) of escaping the wolf. It all depends on what the listener brings to it. You might say that the story is in the ears of the beholder.
The telling matters, too. Many have adopted this perennial favorite, some by simply giving it new illustrations, some by retelling it so creatively that it takes on quite a different flavor. And some, assuming readers’ familiarity with the classic tale, use it as basis for a whole new, mind-bending scenario. Ranging from simple to complex, from earnest to downright hilarious, none of the books described below will appeal to everyone; yet each is excellent in its own way, a worthy choice for the right child.
Paul Galdone’s The Three Little Pigs, small and lap-friendly, is close to Jacobs’s but slightly simplified — a boon for newly independent readers. His deftly sketched piglets are starry-eyed innocents in familiar-looking farmland, his wolf just scary enough to serve the story without provoking nightmares. Cheerful color gives the book a sunny aura and brings out the tale’s humor. For the very youngest, this could be the best choice.
Margot Zemach’s edition, more sophisticated in both language and art, would suit a somewhat older child, perhaps up to second grade. In old-world peasant garb with caps and patches, her mature-looking pigs set energetically to work, evidently inspired by their weeping mama’s advice: “Build good, strong houses, and always watch out for the wolf. Now goodbye, my sons, goodbye.” Like the fine storyteller she is, Zemach often rephrases, comfortable in her own voice yet respectful of her source. In her agreeably atmospheric illustrations, the orderly construction and swift obliteration of the straw and stick houses occur amid homely domestic detail. Then, as the scruffy third pig works his wiles on the ingratiating wolf, the pace quickens. Bit by bit, the wolf’s gentlemanly façade unravels, until at last he plunges down the chimney, dislodging bricks as he goes.
Barry Moser, Glen Rounds, and James Marshall all retell the tale with notable verve and humor, each in his signature style. Moser’s unclad pigs are rough country folk, toothy and bristled. They look like the kind of kids you don’t want to meet coming home from school — a plus, given that his gaunt wolf disposes of two in short order. Moser’s logic is amusingly sensible: when the wolf fails to blow down the house, he has “no breath left . . . so he [sits] down . . . to think”; the pig uses a block and tac
kle to get into the apple tree. Such wry flourishes are best appreciated by older children, while adults will particularly admire Moser’s masterful composition and watercolor technique.
Also for primary grades and up is Glen Rounds’s Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. Rounds takes the story even further into rural America with roughly sketched pigs trotting on all fours and simply burrowing into heaps of straw and sticks they happen to find. His voice is informal, with such clarifications for modern children as an “empty barrel” instead of a butter churn. Broad, craggy pen lines define Rounds’s angular figures, which are elegantly complemented by the bold sans serif type, to handsome graphic effect. Even the skinny, really ugly Big Bad Wolf contributes to the book’s striking visual harmony.
For pure, lighthearted fun with the essential tale intact, James Marshall’s pigs take the cake. The title page sets the tone: one pig paints the title in as many giddy colors as his own wildly patterned trousers, another sleeps, and the nerdy third is reading through a pince-nez. The old sow issues no warnings; it’s just, “Now be sure to write, and remember that I love you,” and off they go, two pigs scantily clad and one dressed like a banker. Later, he talks like one: “Capital idea, my good fellow!” to the man with the bricks, and “Would three o’clock suit you?” to the wolf he plans to evade. Marshall’s narrative bubbles with such diction. His buoyant illustrations are in the same easygoing spirit, from a pig lightly balanced on an airy ridgepole to the dim-looking wolf in red-and-white stripes; from the third pig harvesting turnips (“All you can pick, 10 cents”) to his cozy dinner of wolf (served under a lid, the better to hide it from the squeamish).