Review by New York Times Review
From left, the arch "Dangerous Alphabet"; the architectural "ABC3D"; abstract expressions in "A Is for Art"; and color aplenty in "A Child's Day." IF only life were as tidy as an alphabet book. Children, like many adults, crave predictability and structure, and alphabet books generally deliver. The format provides a framework where none exists - random facts about trains become "All Aboard ABC" - or the setting for a simple story, like the classic "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom." But don't assume all alphabet books are for learning letters or sorting aardvarks, bunnies and cats. They can be avant-garde or even grim. "The Dangerous Alphabet," by Neil Gaiman, renowned for his high-art graphic novel series "The Sandman" is a puzzler - funny, frightening and confusing all at once. Note the plot summary on the book flap: "Two children, treasure map in hand, and their pet gazelle sneak past their father, out of their house and into a world beneath the city where monsters and pirates roam." Oh. The trippy story, illustrated by the aptly pen-named Gris Grimly, is difficult to follow. The premise that the children are searching for treasure is suggested by a small parchment in the spread for the letter A. The girl is kidnapped at the letter E, dragged around what appears to be a gruesome fantasy version of Victorian-era London and frightened by myriad tortures being inflicted on other children from letters F through V. (For example, freshly baked pies, with bones sticking out, accompany the bouncy line "O is for Ovens, far under the street") The girl's brother chases after her, wielding a wooden dagger, gazelle in tow. He triumphs by X, and they return safely to their oblivious dad at Z. The characters - a parade of hollow-eyed children, villains in ragged suits and misshapen, toothy beasts - are difficult to keep track of in the full-spread scenes crowded with ghoulish figures, all rendered with great detail and humor in fine-line ink and washed-out watercolors. Among the skulls, knives and chains, Grimly hides familiar objects and animals that start with the appropriate letter on each page, a challenging treasure hunt for the reader. Gaiman's rhyming verse is a cheeky alphabetical list loosely describing die children's journey, but the humor seems better aimed at older kids than the publisher's recommended "5 and up." Call me a goody-two-shoes, but I won't be reading the words "Q is for Quiet (bar one muffled scream)" to my kindergartner anytime soon. A deceptively simple yet sophisticated idea animates "ABC3D," by the French graphic designer Marion Bataille. Her small, chunky pop-up book has no content save for the letters themselves, but I wanted to read it again and again. A lenticular cover (like a hologram) reveals the title one character at a time, with B doubling as 3. Inside, A and H jump off their pages in hollow, boxy 3-D forms. C flips over as the page opens to become the rounded part of a D. The letters O and P, sharing a page, become Q and R when the reader folds over a translucent overlay adding the tails. U is the most impressive: tiny strips of white paper fan out above a black backing like some perfect parabola, stacking gradually around and upward at the same time. Bataille's colors are bold and simple. Each capital letter is rendered in white, black or red, and appears against a solid white or black background. As a design piece, the book is both elegant and clever. FOR a magnificent medley of works produced over many years, some on a huge scale, read Stephen T. Johnson's "A Is for Art : An Abstract Alphabet," one of this year's winners of a New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books Award. Johnson has works in prominent collections, and New Yorkers may know his 66-foot mural in the DeKalb Avenue subway station. In the author's note he explains this project: "For the past six years I have been exploring the English dictionary, selectively choosing and organizing particular words from each letter of the alphabet and, based solely on the meanings of the words, developing a visual work of art. I took ordinary objects and made them unfamiliar, removing functionality in order to reveal their potential metaphorical associations, which can lead in turn to overlapping and sometimes paradoxical meanings." The art is also just plain fun to look at. The colors and materials are eye-popping, and Johnson hides a letter in each of the 26 pieces. One work, "Dotty Diptych," is made of nearly 2,700 white and black dominoes; dots in the right-hand panel of white dominoes form a tricky letter D. This is a grown-up's alphabet, but for children it is also a whimsical introduction to the realm of abstract art. Ida Pearle's debut picture book, "A Child's Day: An Alphabet of Play," is a colorful ode to the world of young children. The text - single, whimsical verbs like "act," "kick," "yell" - feels fresh. Only "X marks the spot," a disappointing standby that also appears in Caiman's text, falls flat. (And therein lies the tradeoff when adopting the nifty A-B-C format: authors can't skip any letters, even when they have nothing to say.) Pearle must have logged a lot of playground hours observing children. She creates a diverse cast in every skin tone, intricately illustrated in cut-paper collages. No features are drawn into the faces, and the collages are shadowless; the loving details lie in the children's silhouettes, head tilts and gestures (an arm kept shyly behind a girl's back as she feeds a cat). The children wear exquisite geometric patterns in stylish shapes and colors. For Q ("quack"), a girl duck-walks in bright green Wellingtons and a purple jumper with a pattern of white dots. Her hair is a long brown braid clipped above her ear, visible only because the layered cut-outs provide a subtle three-dimensional effect Pearle's gallery of unique hairstyles (braids, curls, ponytails and bobs of every shade and texture) is my favorite part of the book. "A Child's Day" hardly belongs on the same shelf as Neil Gaiman's book, but the alphabet format works for both. Stephen T. Johnson's alliterated text and innovative art have an adult-level complexity, and the alphabet also provides a foothold for young readers. Bataille's book, with its universal appeal, is more about style and paper engineering than it is about the alphabet itself. For Bataille, the letters provide a familiar - and marketable - angle for what is really an interactive work of art. Becca Zerkin, a former New York City public school teacher, writes frequently about children's books.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
Our journey begins on the title page, as two Victorian children and pet gazelle slip away from their father, treasure map in hand, and embark on an alphabetical path through a sewer populated with every sort of ghoul, only to emerge safe at home at the end. Following the A is for & format, Gaiman's text takes the form of 13 tight, evocative rhyming couplets, hand-lettered by Grimley. Page turns divide each couplet, moving the action forward and building the sense of mystery. The illustrations do double duty, telling the children's story and filling each letter's page with suitably ghastly, nominal matter. There's some disturbing stuff on display (the sewer walls are lined with children bound in chains, straitjackets, and rusty manacles), but the character of the pictures, spiky and knobby and childlike, and a palette of beiges accented by muted pastels, mitigates the creepiness. In the end, Gaiman and Grimley have combined forces to produce an acrid, gothic confection that bubbles with vitriol and wit.--Barthelmess, Thom Copyright 2008 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Acrawl with evildoers, Gaiman's (The Wolves in the Walls) rhyming abecedary charts the perils of two children and their limpid-eyed pet gazelle. With the words "A is for Always, that's where we embark;/ B is for Boat, pushing off in the dark," the stern-faced Victorian boy and girl clamber into a bathtub-shaped boat and sail into the bowels of a Dickensian sewer system. An oily brown map suggests a treasure hunt, and the seekers must evade subhuman monsters. Darting past stone-walled quays and rusty pipes ("F is for Fear"), they see unluckier children held in cages and soup pots by freakish octopi and bristling goblins ("H is for `Help me!' "). When the girl is kidnapped by a fleshy ogre, the boy and gazelle brave a Sweeney Todd meat-pie operation ("O is for Ovens, far under the street") and ghoulish Pirates to save her. Grimly (the Wicked Nursery Rhymes volumes) pictures the trio's gruesome ordeal in butcher-shop hues of meaty pink and fatty beige. With Lemony Snicket as a reference point, young goths might eat this up. All the same, Gaiman and Grimly frequently sacrifice humor to fetishize the grotesque; adults might like this best. Ages 5-up. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 3-5-A sophisticated, interactive alphabet tale in which even the letters break the expected pattern. Thirteen rhyming couplets spin the story of two siblings and their pet gazelle who sneak past their father, board a small boat, and follow a stream into a mysterious underworld to search for a treasure. Skillful narrative and visual storytelling combine to present a complex adventure that unravels through multilayered text and illustrations, challenging readers to ponder the numerous levels of plot. When the sister is tempted ashore by villains holding candy and captured, her brother follows in hot pursuit, rushing through a labyrinth realm filled with pirates, monsters, trolls, and other fearsome creatures. Youngsters can mull over questions about the nature of the treasure seeking (the cache turns out to be pretty unappealing) and why W precedes V in the alphabet sequence ("warnings" before "vile deeds"). The gothic illustrations, done in sepia tones and faded color washes, ensure that readers remain riveted throughout the story, since there are spine-chilling details at every turn. Images of objects beginning with the letter featured on the page add to the fun. This is the right book for those who find satisfaction and pleasure in creepy and sinister tales.-Susannah Richards, Eastern Connecticut State University, Willimantic, CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
(Intermediate) Below the surface of the world, in the slimy tunnels of a sewer, creatures scuttle and slither, gizmos clank with menace, and...children practice their ABCs?!? This certainly isn't your mother's alphabet book, and it's far beyond any children still learning their letters, but Gaiman and Grimly's subversive fairy tale of an abecedarian is a wild ride nonetheless, aimed at older readers who can appreciate the phonetic wordplay ("L is, like 'eaven, their last destination"), metafictional winks ("I am the author who scratches these rhymes"), and "not to be relied upon" letter order. Rhyming couplets introduce one letter per line, while Grimly's gruesome caricature illustrations provide letter-appropriate clues and relate the encompassing story: a brother and sister (and their wide-eyed pet gazelle) embark on a dangerous treasure hunt through the city sewers; the sister is, in short order, abducted by pirates; and the brother and gazelle chase after her. Interconnected subplots of monsters and captive children swirl about them on each double-page spread, rendered in shades of brown, beige, and dun (with rose, black, and orange accents) that emphasize the old-fashioned tone established by the siblings' attire and the stone-walled sewer setting. Though some lines ("K's but a Kiss -- lovers glow with elation") strain to fit the narrative, in general the couplets demonstrate Gaiman's facility with language and imagery, flowing well and suggesting philosophical depth. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Normal abecedarian fodder gets a poke in the ribcage with this most unusual alphabet tale.A boy and a girl clad in rumpled Victorian weeds and their stalwart gazelle navigate both monsters and madmen in hopes of reaching their final destination. Unfortunately, along the way the girl is taken captive and it's up to the boy and gazelle to rescue her from a series of ingenious nightmares.Each letter of the alphabet occupies one half of a rhyming couplet, objects that begin with each letter appearing on the pages in a sort of Gothic Animalia (Graeme Base, 1986). Grimly's gleefully ghoulish Tim Burton-esque line-and-watercolor illustrations are the star here. The letters have a haphazard relationship to their couplets, as with "Z waits alone and it's not for a thing," and there is one instance in which two letters appear out of order, rendering this alphabet "not to be relied upon." Fans of both creators' works will seek this title out, as will adults of the macabre persuasion. Children appear to be a secondary consideration. (Picture book. 7-12) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
