ALPHABET ANIMALS

Twenty-six glorious works of art, distinguished by their appeal for children, excellent reproduction, and variety—a lion from a Japanese photographer, Calder's folded kangaroo, an ancient Iranian ibex in bronze, an abstract-expressionist whale, a romantic tiger by Delacroix, a Warhol rhinoceros. For each, Sullivan adds a few lines of mildly whimsical verse, unpretentious but pleasant, nicely meeting his intention of varying ``mood, rhythm, rhyme, and sentence structure, so that young readers can [also] begin to enjoy the different shadings and tones of poems.'' A splendid way to introduce fine art—or the alphabet. (Picture book. 3-7)