THE LITTLE i WHO LOST HIS DOT

As the title indicates, a missing dot becomes the device for a whimsical alphabetic romp.

It’s the last day of Alphabet School, and Little i hops out of bed to join his friends. But something is amiss. “Little g gasped, Little p pointed, and Little s stared.” They ask, “where is your dot?” Little i hadn’t noticed it was missing! All of the letters offer to help find it, bringing him vaguely dotlike objects and using verbs that correspond with their names. “Little b burst forward with a balloon,” and “Little d dashed over with a donut.” Little i is offered variously an egg, a gumball, a kiwi, an oyster shell, and more. Cartoonish illustrations present simple letter shapes with pipestem arms and legs, dots for eyes, and small lines for eyebrows and mouths to lend them character; they are a colorful bunch, popping against the mostly white background. While the conceit allows for fairly graceful treatment of Q (“Little q questioned, ‘How about this quarter?’ ”) and Z (“Little z, always last, zoomed over with a zero”), all Little x has to offer is a “xylophone mallet.” The ending is a clever solution with a twist: Little i left his dot on his pillow—but Capital I, his father, thinks maybe he’s big enough to do without anyway.