Five ALPHABET Books

Five ALPHABET Books for Children

In spirit of Children’s Book Week, I will be presenting FIVE quality children’s book each day. Tuesday’s theme is...

ALPHABET BOOKS

Why?

I love alphabet books. In fact, I collect alphabet books! More so, alphabet books are a great way to help children development their literacy skills by assisting them in learning the sound-symbol relationships of letters. As children become more comfortable with basic reading strategies, alphabet books become a platform for children to become writers. 

THE BOOKS!

If Rocks Could Sing: A Discovered Alphabet by Leslie McGuirk

Alpha Oops!: The Day Z Went First by Alethea Kontis

 The Z Was Zapped by Chris Van Allsburg

Paul Thurlby’s Alphabet by Paul Thurlby

 The Dangerous Alphabet by Neil Gaiman

Shiver Me Letters

Sobel, June. (2006). Shiver Me Letters: A Pirate ABC. Cole, H. New York: Scholastic, Inc.

Literary Genre: (Concept Book) Picture Storybook 

The feisty crocodile captain proclaims, “R’s not enough. We need other letters to help make us tough.” Then he sends his animal pirates off on a quest to capture all the other letters in the alphabet. The G glistens in the treasure chest, the T is on a turtle, and the waves washed up W. The letters are humorously hidden throughout the bright, engaging water-colored illustrations and the alliterated text provides clues that assist young readers in learning their ABCs.

My four-year old son loves pirates, so this book was a big hit for him. The illustrations are strategically designed to invite the reader to respond to the story. For example, young readers will have fun pointing out the fun facial expressions of the animal pirates as well as, enjoy discovering the letters and other items such as sea shells, fish, gold coins, etc, that are scattered throughout the story. The variety of sentence structure makes the book fun to read and introduces sentence types to young listeners. Overall, I like the book and think it is important to have books of high interest topics (such as pirates) in your book collection.