LETTERS ARE FOR LEARNING

This small, square board book offers a scene incorporating animal characters, actions, and miscellaneous items to introduce each letter of the alphabet.

The book begins with “A is for adding.” The accompanying illustration depicts an anteater using an abacus. “B is for bouncing” features a bluebird dribbling a basketball. Since only the actions (adding, bouncing, etc.) are actually named in the text, readers can have fun figuring out the names of the animals and spotting all the objects that begin with the featured letter. “I is for inviting,” for example, depicts an iguana with a bottle of ink and what appears to be a glass of iced tea. The jellyfish is juggling jacks, jewels, jellybeans, and jigsaw-puzzle pieces. The combinations make for amusing scenarios, though a couple of choices will likely throw readers for a bit of a loop, such as “X is for xing" (initially confusing but recognizable as “crossing” when paired with “yielding” and “zigzagging”). In the droll illustrations, the animals take on human qualities and wear big, earnest, closed-eye grins.

This whimsical presentation of the alphabet is good fun for both toddlers and their adults.