Alphabet books for city kids

Dear Aunt Debbie,

Happily, the Leonard Weisgard Night Before Christmas contains the "settled our brains" line -- yet another reason to adore it.  I'm looking forward to being able to settle my brain a little next week.  But enough Christmas for the moment -- I'm beginning to feel like one of those radio stations that plays only holiday music from mid-November through January 1st, thus driving everyone in the supermarket and the laundry room crazy.

I've been thinking about alphabet books.  Eleanor has known the letters of the alphabet for a while now, but has only recently begun to be interested in how words are spelled and which letters begin which words.  We have a number of alphabet books, some of which have enjoyed moments of glory (Max's ABC, for one), but many of which have languished on our shelves.  I think now may be their moment.

Two good alphabet books in our collection also happen to be good New York books.  We tend to get a lot of NewYork-themed books from friends and relatives, some of which are well-illustrated but kind of plotless (I Live in Brooklyn), some of which are totally inane (Good Night, New York City and its cousins, bidding goodnight to cities around the country with no character whatsoever), and some of which are quite good.


ABC NYC: A Book About Seeing New York City, by Joanne Dugan, is made up of photographs Dugan took while walking around New York with her young son. She was frustrated with the bucolic nature of many of the objects and animals in his alphabet books (how many New York kids see cows on a regular basis?), and decided to create a book that would speak to city kids.  Each page contains a photo of a letter of the alphabet (from signs, graffitti, subway tiles, etc.) next to or superimposed over a city thing beginning with that letter.  Some are particularly New York (C is for the Chrysler Building, O is for Obelisk); some applicable to multiple cities (M is for Manhole cover, W is for Water Tower).  The pictures, both black and white and in color, are crisp and gorgeous.  One of my colleagues told me today that his 2 1/2 -year-old twin boys adore this book; every time they see the Chrysler Building from the elevated train, they call out in excited recognition.

New York, New York!: The Big Apple from A to Z is the kind of book you want to pore over.  Laura Krauss Melmed wrote the text: brief descriptions of the New York City landmark chosen for each letter, with additional small paragraphs of informational text scattered over the pages.  Frane Lessac did the illustrations, which are warm, colorful, and a little childlike in feel.  It's wildly Manhattan-heavy, of course, but it contains packed scenes and fun facts to engage kids on a number of levels.  It would also make a great kids' guidebook for a New York visit, I bet.

Love, Annie

Poetry 4

Dear Aunt Debbie,

Every fall, I do a poetry project with my freshmen which requires them to choose a poet they're not familiar with and delve into his or her work, creating a personal anthology and emulating the poet's work. As we begin, I ask my students about poets and poems they already know and love. Shel Silverstein is always mentioned, and there is always a collective moment of 14-year-old nostalgia -- kids love him. Of course, then I have the sometimes difficult task of steering them towards other poets who are not Shel Silverstein in order to broaden their horizons.

For the die-hard Silverstein fan, another surefire winner is Ogden Nash. Nash wrote volumes and volumes of light verse, some poems more adult than others. The current Nash poem in the zeitgeist, to our family's great joy, is The Adventures of Isabel.

It's the rhyming story of a spunky girl who confronts a variety of unpleasant creatures (bear, witch, giant, doctor) and defeats them in turn. A sample:

Once in a night as black as pitch
Isabel met a wicked old witch.
The witch's face was cross and wrinkled,
The witch's gums with teeth were sprinkled.

Ho, ho, Isabel! the old witch crowed.
I'll turn you into an ugly toad!
Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry,
Isabel didn't scream or scurry,

She showed no rage
and she showed no rancor,
But she turned the witch into milk
and drank her.

Eleanor is in love with this book, and not only because the heroine has her little sister's name. Bridget Starr Taylor's illustrations are brightly colored and zingy, imagining all the episodes in a fantastic and connected landscape. The rhyme and rhythm are unbelievably catchy. It includes a CD of Ogden Nash himself reading the poem in his slightly creaky voice. After a good friend gave us the book, Eleanor had us read it aloud to her easily thirty times in two days. She can now recite most of it by heart.

If all that weren't enough, I discovered last night that Natalie Merchant has just released a song using the lyrics to the poem.  [The Youtube link we had up here has been pulled due to copyright issues.  New link is a rehearsal recording of the whole song -- same feel, though Merchant isn't totally on top of the lyrics yet.]

If this is the major cultural artifact Isabel has to contend with growing up, we will consider ourselves very lucky.

After posting about Mother Goose a few nights ago, I realized I'd forgotten to mention our other favorite nursery rhyme book:The Helen Oxenbury Nursery Collection. (Of course, it's out of print. Still findable, though.)

I've always thought of Oxenbury as a brilliant illustrator, but evidently she's quite a good editor and adapter as well. The collection is divided into three parts, each excerpted from other out-of-print Oxenbury books: "Verses from Tiny Tim," "Nursery Rhymes," and "Nursery Stories." We started with the first two sections, before Eleanor was able to listen to longer stories, and there are some fabulous rhymes here. The one we chant most often is "Choosing Shoes," by Frida Wolfe:

New shoes, new shoes,
Red and pink and blue shoes.
Tell me what would you choose,
If they'd let us buy?

Buckle shoes, bow shoes,
Pretty pointy-toe shoes,
Strappy, cappy low shoes;
Let's have some to try.

Bright shoes, white shoes,
Dandy-dance-by-night shoes,
Perhaps-a-little-tight shoes,
Like some? So would I.

BUT
Flat shoes, fat shoes,
Stump-along-like-that shoes,
Wipe-them-on-the-mat shoes,
O that's the sort they'll buy.

The stories (Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, The Three Little Pigs, etc.) are mostly wonderful, but Oxenbury doesn't clean them up: two of the little pigs die, as do most of the animals in "Henny Penny." This bothered me more than it did Eleanor.

On the subject of rhyme, we are in love with a weird little book (out of print? Natch.) called Pass the Celery, Ellery!
It's a rhyming alphabet book, with quirky painted illustrations of small people and large food on each page, captioned with polite requests: "Pass the abalone, Tony." "Pass the linguini, Teeny." "Pass the ratatouille, Louis." "Pass the water, daughter." As you might imagine, it's insanely catchy, and led to Eleanor trying to rhyme everything she could, all the time. Worth looking for.

Love, Annie