Brainstorm 181: Artsy ABC Books

Well, the best laid plans oft go awry, right? My plan to post several summer shorts editions of the Brainstorm obviously didn’t happen. (I got a whopping 1 of them posted.) Here it is August 9 and the first week of school is coming to a close. I had this summer shorts post ready to go, but just never got it posted. So we’ll call this the close of summer/ease back into school Brainstorm. Today I’ve got a pair of artsy ABC books and a tangential third book that fits the topic but is also a little different.

Artsy ABC Pair

These two ABC books are the kind of thing you could have sitting on your coffee table or chop up and hang on the walls. They are just as much works of art as they are the alphabet in book form. Neither have any words.

Alphabet Kingdom by Starla Michelle Halfmann
In this book, each spread shows a decorative capitol letter on the left page and an imaginatively colored animal that starts with that letter on the right. I say imaginatively because Halfmann's illustrations are kind of impressionistic in that she adds colors to the animals that aren't true to real life. They're very vibrant and eye-catching though, and I can see little ones I know being enthralled with the brightly colored animals. The back of the book includes a list of all the animals included in case you can't figure them out. I had to look for N which is a nyala.

Target Readers:

• ABC learners
• Animal lovers
• Art lovers

An Artist’s Alphabet by Norman Messenger
Have fun analyzing this ABC book which features retro-style illustrations of the letters of the alphabet. I couldn’t always figure out if something in the illustration correlated to the letter or not. But fans of art deco will likely gather this up, and ABC learners can still practice their letter identification skills with it.

Target Readers:

• ABC learners
• Art lovers

The Tangential Third

ABC Dream by Kim Krans
This is another wordless ABC book with beautiful illustrations, but there’s a lot more going on in each illustration than is immediately evident. Each page or spread features several things that start with that letter, and EVERYTHING on that page is significant from the name of the item to its positioning. So not only can kids work on their ABCs, but even older readers will get a good mental workout figuring out how everything relates to that letter of the alphabet. Some pages are definitely easier than others. If a little one (or an adult co-reader) gets stuck, there is a list for each page in the back of the book.

Target Readers:

• ABC learners
• Art lovers
• Puzzle lovers