P IS FOR PEANUT

More a visual than a verbal literacy booster, this alphabet presents 26 classic black-and-white photos from the Getty Museum collections—opening with an 1862 shot of “Abe” Lincoln at Antietam, closing with one taken ten years earlier of a snoozing hippo in a London zoo, and in between offering works from Steiglitz, Weegee, Lange, Halsman and other, mostly renowned, photographers. Nearly all feature children or, at least, subjects that children will comprehend, and amusing or ironic captions: “K is for kooky” aptly describes a dancer posing in a costume made of wire loops, for instance, and “M is for manners” comments archly on glowering Italian peasants stuffing handfuls of pasta into their mouths. As enticing invitations to look for clues and details in the photos are unfortunately relegated to the end, along with the identifying labels, this is less well-designed than Charles Sullivan’s Alphabet Animals (1991)—but it does make a complementary introduction to photography as an artistic medium. (Picture book. 8-10)