From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 1—Alphabet books abound, but playful verse and an inventive concept set this "Isn't Alphabet" apart from more traditional titles. Ulmer tells her listeners what each letter does not stand for before offering a word that begins with the correct sound. "A isn't for box; it isn't for fox/A is for ants that crawl over your socks./B isn't for kite; it isn't for light./B is for bats that fly by in the night." Though the entertaining non-examples show an appreciation for the audience's sense of the silly, Knorr's charming paintings of winking cats, smiling jellyfish, trumpeting lions, and pillow-fighting llamas are worth the purchase price alone. Each letter is presented in upper- and lowercase with an accompanying array of images. Children who are confident in their phonemic prowess will be enticed to identify the appropriate noun pictured with each letter. Artful compositions will invite even younger listeners to linger over each illustration, regardless of the potential lesson. The anthropomorphized images make even the less-familiar creatures in Ulmer's examples ("nuthatch," "Xenops") more accessible. This pleasant work will be at home in most libraries.—
Jayne Damron, Farmington Community Library, MI Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
This playful alphabet book has a rhythmic, rhyming text that points out a couple of things each letter does not stand for before identifying an animal that begins with that letter. For example, “M isn’t for rat; it isn’t for bat. / M is for moose in a red-checkered hat.” Energetic, colorful, and often jovial, the pictures offer plenty of details for children to notice. But children who enjoy hunting for the animals and objects named in the text may be disappointed to find that although most of them are represented in the illustrations, not all of them can be found there. Some of the animals are presented naturalistically, while others, including the jellyfish with eyes and mouths superimposed on their bells, are more cartoonlike. From the illustrator of P Is for Pelican (2003) and K Is for Keystone (2003), here’s yet another twist on the alphabet theme. Preschool-Kindergarten. --Carolyn Phelan
