With great imagination and finesse, Tobias and Malone rework the well-burnished components of an alphabet book and a quotation book into an eclectic whole. The net of allusions has been cast wide: from the Inuit and the Ute to T.S. Eliot and George Herriman of Krazy Kat; from Gary Soto and Lucille Clifton to the Genesis and Joel Chandler Harris. For every letter of the alphabet, Tobias has chosen one or more brief fragments of poetry or prose; while virtually all of the sources are familiar, many of the choices are not. These face Malone’s fabulous illustrations, dreamlike, opulent, and occasionally surreal. Book combines quotes about books by Kate Guess, Thomas Jefferson, and M.B. Goffstein with an illustration of a small girl in a bathtub boat; Opal Whiteley’s and Seamus Heaney’s quotations for Shadow face a rabbit father and child who are making people shadows on the wall. (Picture book. 5-10)
