Customer Reviews

A Peaceable Kingdom: The Shaker Abecedarius

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Delicate and detailed illustrations with old fashioned looking pictures this book is based on a traditional Shaker abc rhyme of animal names. The illustrations are playful and you can tell the artists had fun illustrating this book. The book introduces unusual animals names like xanthos, ocelot, angleworm and ichneumon. Fun book to share with your children.

My 1 year old LOVES this book! It's great fun for him to learn animal names. He loves the rhyme and rhythm, and we both love the illustrations.

This book is a classic work of the Provensens. Although I am unfamiliar with the reason for the choice of included words (not always alphabetical, not always relevant), the now out of print picture book is beautifully illustrated by Richard Meran Barsan, a pleasure for the eyes, and a fun book for those 4,5,or 6 years old.

Subtitled-A Shaker Abecedarius-meaning a mnemonic device for teaching the alphabet, i.e. the ABCs. (Notice in the lines below that the first letter in each line advances the alphabet as the poem works its way from 'A' to 'Z.')


Alligator, beetle, porcupine, whale,
Bobolink, panther, dragonfly, snail,
Crocodile, monkey, buffalo, hare,
Dromedary, leopard, mud turtle, bear,
Elephant, badger, pelican, ox,
Flying fish, reindeer, anaconda, fox,
...

In the last line, above, the initial 'A' in 'a____naconda' wants to be stretched in order to keep the poem's cadence. That is the part where, when reading aloud, you trace your child's finger along the length of the most even-tempered anaconda that any five Shakers ever absently held at waist high. And, I suggest, do not neglect to tap the fox by way of putting a period on the sentence. (Try it in the air without ever having seen the book--it works just as well.) The bemused and becalmed illustrations look like period pieces, but they are not. An editor's and illustrator's labor of love and a good book to read to your child both before and after he or she is born.

[Other they-don't-make-'em-like-they-used-to suggestions are: the one volume editions of the Golden Encyclopedia and the Golden Bible (circa 1949), and an in-and-out-of-print title, The Little Lame Prince and The Adventures Of A Brownie by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik (1826-1887) with illustrations by Edwin.J. Prittie. (The ONLY edition to get is The John C. Winston Company Edition of 1928.)

Thanks largely to their illustrations, all of these titles, especially the last, will re-create for you and your child the lost-in-time reading experience of a bygone era. Great gifts.]