Fun Fact About ABC Books:
There are three types of ABC books that are known as:
- The Swallow Alphabet: this type involves arranging the letters by anything that revolves around eating things or use food as signifies for letters.
- The Body Alphabet: this type was common in the 1800s and used drawings of people’s bodies or animal bodies that were made into the shapes of letters.
- Alphabetic Array or Worldly Alphabet: this type is most commonly used for children today and is where each letter can stand for anything in the world that starts with that letter.
When we think about children’s literature as a whole, ABC
books for children are always an area of inquiry. This doesn’t seem surprising
since, each year, there are many new publications of ABC books for children. It
could possibly be just a race to the top, who can think up the newest most
clever way to teach children the alphabet.
From The New England Primer |
Let’s starts with the basics. An abecedarian text is any
construction of text that is arranged alphabetically. Texts that included the
alphabet started with the primers, in the mid to late 1500’s. The primers were
books used in early education and included various religious lessons within its
abecedarian form. The New England Primer was
the first of this kind in the United States that was intended to teach children
to read so that they would be able to read the Bible. John Locke, in 1693,
suggested that learning the alphabet should begin as soon as possible for a
child, which then allowed these alphabetic methods to adapt into texts for
children with more playful elements. In the 18th century, once
realizing how profitable book publishing for children was, John Newbery
published a type of abecedarian called A
Little Pretty Pocket Book with images that were carved from wood and
depicted playful setting, starting with “A is for Archer and shot at a frog.” These
types of children’s texts were then later turned even more popular through
their use of verse and rhyming patterns.
After years passed and more biblical referencing ABC books
for children were published, children authors of nonsense finally jump on the
children-abecedarian bandwagon and perhaps do an even better job of flipping it
upside-down on its head. Alphabet book publications seem to be a common habit
among nonsense authors. Edward Lear, Edward St. John Gorey, Shel Silverstein,
Dr. Suess, and even Maurice Sendak all have at least one published alphabet
book for children.
Within Edward Lear’s collection of nonsense literature,
there is A Nonsense Alphabet, which perhaps later on inspired one
Edward St. John Gorey to publish so many of his nonsense and dark ABC books for
children. How does anyone forget the lines: “A is for Amy who fell down the
stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears” (The Gashlycrumb Tinies)?
In today’s age, while there are some creative ABC books for
children still being published, they may be lost on the shelves, squished
between the ABC baby board book, the ABC baby peek-a-book board book, the ABC
baby bath time plastic book, and any other form they come in that are harder
for baby consumption. So maybe instead of worrying about eaten pages out of ABC
books for children, we should worry about the content and display that these
eaten pages would have contained.
And while most ABC books for children being published
today have different marketing intentions, there are still some note-worthy
contemporary ABC books for children. One
example is Animalia, a sophisticated
alphabet book by Graeme Base. This incredibly artistic and creative ABC book
took three years to create and was an international best seller. Animalia is a great example of playful
ABC books with its hidden boy in each picture, which was actually the author
as a little boy. Marion Bataille is another author worthy of recognition. She published
a 3D alphabet book for children titled ABC3D
in 2008 that also came with a cool video of a hand flipping through its pages
to the tube of "Roll On Mississippi, Roll On" by The Boswell Sisters.
These contemporary examples of ABC books
for children will hopefully challenge and inspire the next abecedarian books
for children authors to continue to create clever, witty, and a unique design
in order to continue a culture of brilliant ABC books for children.
Notes and Citations:
"Animalia (1986)." The Cambridge Guide to
Children's Books in English. Ed. Victor Watson. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001. Credo Reference. Web. 20 Oct 2015.
"Alphabet Books." The Cambridge Guide to
Children's Books in English. Ed. Victor Watson. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001. Credo Reference. Web. 20 Oct 2015.
Shortsleeve, Kevin. "Edward Gorey, Children's
Literature, and Nonsense Verse." Children's Literature Association
Quarterly, 27.1 (2002): 27-39.
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