is one of our favorite alphabet books even though it scores pretty low on several of my pre-announced factors. I think the reason is mostly familiarity. I read this so many times as a child that my parents can still, decades later, recite most of it from memory. I acquired a copy when Charlie was very young and started reading it to him frequently. It grew on all of us. I had originally planned to rank the factors on a 1-5 scale, but letter grades is just way more appropriate, don't you think?
Legible Capital and Lower-Case: B. The book has a big capital letter on each page, and features a lowercase sample by itself on almost every page (not on O, P, and X for some reason). The lowercase letter is in the ordinary font size, though. The letters are included in the lines of text rather than set off by themselves. Still, it's pretty effective, and Charlie will point them out, often without prompting.
Filler Words: B. I'm not counting sentences like "What begins with B?" as filler, because they introduce the letter. This book is very mixed about filler words. Some pages have almost none: "Big B, little b, What begins with B? Barber baby bubbles and a bumblebee." Others have more, but they're used to pretty good effect: "O is very useful. You use it when you say: 'Oscar's only ostrich oiled an orange owl today." The only one that makes my skin crawl is the use of an N on the M page: "Big M, little m. Many mumbling mice are making midnight music in the moonlight . . . mighty nice." You might actually call that two N's and an L, as lots of kids will parse mid-night and moon-light as separate words.
Cheat Words: D. Duck-dog. Fiffer-feffer-feff. Googoo. Kerchoo. Lola Lopp. Quacker-oo. Tuttle-tuttle. Uncle Ubb. Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz. It's Dr. Seuss. He makes up words. You're going to have to live with it. I do want to point out that there are a bunch of a different kind of cheat words for X, that he uses to great effect: NiXie KnoX, aX, eXtra, foX.
Understandable Words: A. This is one place where the book really shines. Dr. Seuss did an excellent job of picking out words that are recognizable and relevant to kids. Sometimes he chooses exotic animals like a Yak, but these are easy to explain and terrific for imagining. All of the words he chooses are easily illustrated, not abstract, even the verbs.
Sounding Out: C. I just don't think he paid much attention to this aspect. Some of the words are easy to sound out, others not. I believe he was writing for a company that was really into "sight words" instead of phonics. That doesn't spoil the book at all, it's just not a bonus. Anyway, by the time Charlie got interested in figuring out the other letters in a word, he'd already memorized this book.
Hidden Pictures: (none). I'm not scoring this factor in books that don't have hidden pictures, because it's optional. The illustrations here show just what's in the text, and that's that.
Illustrations: B. First the good. Every single word beginning with the featured letter is illustrated on the page, nouns, verbs, and adjectives alike. You can point to them while you're reading. One of my favorites is the letter P, which reads, "Painting pink pajamas. Policeman in a pail. Peter Pepper's puppy. And now Papa's in the pail." A completely bizarre set of things and activities, but each one is clearly drawn. The reason it's a B instead of an A is that I'm just not a huge fan of the Dr. Seuss illustration style.
Theme: (none). Also optional. No theme here, unless you count Dr. Seuss as a theme.
One unusual and very nice feature of this book is that it stops three times to review "the alphabet up until now." You read A through F, and then the G page begins with "ABCDEFG." And it fits the rhyme scheme, too! The entire alphabet-so-far is reviewed again at P and just before Z. Charlie loves this, and gets so excited to read along or sing the alphabet song at these points. I always let him say the last letter himself, and as a young toddler he was always so proud of choosing the right letter to come next. I think this is a huge part of the appeal of this book.
As an added bonus, here's Charlie at 15 months "helping" me sing the alphabet song. It's hard to believe he was ever this little!
Overall, this is a pretty good alphabet book that can draw you in with rhyme and accessibility. There are definitely some negatives. It's not my theoretical favorite, but in practice we read it over and over again. Charlie will often pull it off the shelf again after I "rotate" the active books and try to hide it, so it must be doing something right. I'll call this a moderate recommend, despite the cheat words.
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