is a book that I love in theory, but in practice it has trouble holding Charlie's attention. He'll be interested for a few pages, maybe even half of the book, but then he'll wander off to do something else. I haven't figured out why. It's not too long, just a sentence for each letter. The illustrations are funny and attractive, with vibrant colors. Maybe the words are a bit too complex, or he's put off by the lack of rhymes. But I want so much for him to like it.... It scores very high on most of my alphabet book criteria.Legible Capital and Lowercase: A. This is a large book (8.5 x 11 pages) with little content, so everything inside is big and bold. The individual letters are showcased in huge font on the entire bottom half of the left-hand page, capital and lowercase. The bottom of the right-hand page shows the entire alphabet in small lowercase letters, with the featured letter for that page in bold with an underline. The font is not too fancy, though Charlie did have a bit of trouble identifying the Q because of a weird tail. Some of the illustrations show characters standing or sitting on top of the letters, which can be a little bit distracting but is also really cute.
Filler Words: A+. This book has zero filler words, even though it is written in sentences! I cannot emphasize enough how rare this is. They pull off this trick by being imaginative with verbs and by writing a lot in plurals so no a/an/the is needed. "Arthur's angry ant ate apples." "Brianna bounces beautiful bugs." "Claude's crafty cuckoo collects coins." All the way through "Zack zaps zeppelins!" It's brilliant.
Cheat Words: A. They've done an excellent job picking words that legitimately start with the letters and have the correct sound. X is the hardest, of course, and they've gone with "Xavier x-rays xylophones." Not perfect, but not terrible either. I'm happy to forgive this because they did such a great job on "Queenie questions quivering quails."
Understandable Words: C. This is certainly part of what loses Charlie's interest. The book gets pretty abstract at times with words like quivering, elegant, crafty, irritable, marvelous. He has to ask what they mean, and they're not easy for me to define, either. And they can't really be drawn in the illustrations.
Sounding Out: B. Each letter gets a two-page spread. The left side has the sentence at the top and the large letters at the bottom, with an illustration of the sentence. The right side has the full alphabet at the bottom and at the top, it repeats a single word from the sentence and shows a large illustration of just that one thing. These words are pretty good for sounding out. Apple, bug, cuckoo, dog. Not all the words in the book are phonetic, but the majority of these featured ones are.
Hidden Pictures: (none).
Illustrations: A. I love the visual style of this book. It manages to be vibrant while using pastels, somehow. The characters are manga-inspired, with round faces and horizontal lines for eyes. The sentences are cleverly illustrated, even if not all of the nuances of the words can come across to a child. It's very well done.
Theme: (none).
I didn't realize until I was writing this review that Basher books are a series. There seem to be a variety about science and math topics, mainly aimed at somewhat older kids. They have great reviews on Amazon, so maybe this author is better at appealing to older kids than to the 3-year-old set. Perhaps Charlie would appreciate this book more if he were older and had a more extensive vocabulary. I suspect that he'll be well beyond alphabet books by the time he understands what an elegant elephant is, but that will not be true of all children. I love this book so much that I hope the target market manages to find it.
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