MR. MAZOO AND MR. TYLER’S ABC ADVENTURE

Eccentric inventors travel back in time to relive their childhood discovery of the alphabet in Rachel and Donald Westbrook’s picture book.

Mr. Mazoo and Mr. Tyler are older adult scientific engineers who live in a Tennessee mansion with their inventions. (A “shrinking machine” allowed the pair to make themselves small enough to ride “around and around” on their own toy train set, “but that’s a different story for another time,” the narrator teases.) Here, the playful inventors use their time machine to jump back to “one of the greatest adventures of their lives: learning their ABCs!” As they watch their younger selves in class, the book becomes a traditional alphabet primer, devoting one page to each letter as kid pals Mazoo and Tyler engage with each of the “amazing machines and inventions” pictured: “I is for ice skates / I can do it!”; K is for kayak / Keep paddling!”; “Z is for zip line / Zoom, zoom, zoom / all the way to the finish line!” The celebratory energy of a child’s mastery of the alphabet fuels this simple story for young readers. Khan’s full-color, full-page illustrations are pleasing, particularly the vivid alphabet pages featuring wide-eyed, excited little-boy versions of grown-up Mr. Mazoo and Mr. Tyler. At the end, the authors leave readers with a question to stir their imaginations: Where would they go if they had a time machine?

Infused with a sense of fun—a worthwhile addition to the alphabet-book canon.