Customer Reviews

The Alphabet Room

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the most charming alphabet book for young children that I have ever seen. The whimsical humour of the illustrations are fun for both parents and children. My 3-year old adores it, as do I!

We bought this book for our two year old daughter and absolutely LOVE it. It has big letters on one page and an object that starts with the letter opposite -- PLUS a building picture that contains the previous objects under a lift-the-flap for each set. Our daughter quickly learned her alphabet and can now recognize all the letters and many new objects she didn't know before: jester, quilt, painting (to name a few). Plus, this book is INTERESTING and really promotes spending some quality time with your kids. It has so much to it that we take it on airplanes and long car trips -- you could spend a few minutes going quickly through letters or a half hour exploring the photos and spelling words. What a tremendous book!

This is a GREAT book for young children. Each page builds on the last. It's fun searching for the items on each page.

Beautiful and Clever. We eagerly await Ms. Pinto's future efforts.

this is so much more than just an alphabet book. it's interactive, funny, creative and beautiful!
if you pay close attention you might notice something new every time. and to top it off, it doubles as a good night book
because everyone in the room goes to sleep at the end. good for a range of ages. finally, a worthwhile alphabet book.
("what pete ate from a-z" by maira kalman is also good)

My three year old and I read this for the first time last week and we giggled and shouted as we read, because of the clever humor and charming nuances of the book that really engage a child and even an adult! Each page is dedicated to a letter, associated with a word beginning with that letter. Behind a flap is a room that slowly fills with those items, at first simply placed, and after awhile, humorously positioned, often in unexpected ways. My daughter was shouting "You can't do that!" and "That's silly!" as we went through the book and it was my pleasure to see her enjoying repeating the letters but more importantly, finding the idea of letters and objects to be playful and fun. If you look carefully, you find some things that you don't even see the first or second time. This is a hit.

This is a very re-readable alphabet book for young readers, which is a major plus of parents of young readers. Each page features a representative being or object (such as N=newspaper) and a little door. When you open the door, you see a scene of the new element incorporated into the growing tableau of items and animals (and one person). You might see a cat and dog dancing together, balancing bowls on their heads, while a lamb plays guitar. Trust me, it looks much better than my description.

The best thing about the book is that, with all of the complex scenes, you can talk to your young reader about just what's going on, making each read different.

In short, there's a lot more to this book than meets the eye, which makes it a much better re-read. Highly recommended!

I always appreciate the reviews of other Amazon customers but could never spur myself to write my own - until, that is, I saw how few reviews there were for this absolutely exquisite children's book. This was one of many books that we were gifted when our son was born, but it's the one that we all love the most - including my son, who is now 12 months old. It's become his potty-time book, so he spends sometimes an hour or so a day looking at this book and after several months of such a routine he still isn't tired of it. It's a combo of factors that make this book so fabulous for babies (and, I suspect, small children) - it has colourful, quirky images, combined with a lift-the-flap option - and what's behind the flaps is far more imaginative than the usual lift-the-flap book. Although there are no words in this alphabet book the various images used to connote the words ('apple', 'bowls', 'cat', etc.) are all added to the 'Alphabet Room' in ever stranger configurations as the book progresses (with cats juggling bowls, dogs wearing moustaches and snakes piroutting with eggs). Moreover, the images tell a story of life inside the room (i.e. when the lamb enters the scene, the poor ivy keeps disappearing and growing back again). My son has been entranced by the images since we first started showing them to him at 10 months and, moreover, he's started to learn the alphabet and to enunciate the sounds that go with each letter. We love this book so much that we've bought all of Sarah Pinto's other books, although this is still our favourite. The only other books that hold his interest as well are those by Alison Jay. I can't, therefore, recommend this book enough.

Each letter has a page with an item starting with the letter, as usual for an alphabet book, of course. The difference here is that there is a flap to open, always a winner although problematic with the littlest ones, and the items continue to the next page: apple on the first page, apples in a Bowl on the second, apples in a bowl with a cat on the third, etc. The illustrations are whimsical and interesting (in what other alphabet book does one page show the Jester reading the newspaper and on another she's wearing the newspaper while the dog wears her outfit?), and I still find something new after numerous readings. My kids look on each page to see who is wearing the moustache now: the fish or the dog or the guitar? Fun!

My daughter and I love this book, we wore out our first copy (a hand-me-down) and have bought a second copy.