THE ALPHABET TREE by Leo Lionni

This book traces the evolution of language from individual letters to fully formed expressions of ideas. The book begins as a scatter of letters across the page and will prompt lap readers to point out familiar letters. The story unfolds from the perspective, first of two ants chatting away, and then to a “funny bug, red and black with bright yellow wings.’  The bug teaches the letters, huddled in the trees, to make words. A “purple, wooly, and very large” caterpillar suggests that the words strive to make meaning and so the letters further rearrange themselves to describe their world: “the wind is bad,” “the leaves are green,” “the bug is small.”  The unsatisfied caterpillar encourages the letters toward further greatness, urging them to say something of importance. The letters create a message of peace and goodwill and the caterpillar carries the message off on his back to share with the President.

Lionni does a wonderful job harnessing his skills as storyteller, infusing poetry and humanity in a book that is ostensibly about sentence construction. His cheerful illustrations are restrained enough to evoke curiosity and meddlesomeness in a few graphic strokes. The visual spread of block inked trees are a vivid backdrop to the black times roman letters that come together to form words and sentences. This book will be useful at home and in the classroom to teach letters and language. It is a wonderful way to demonstrate the way letters make words, words make sentences, and sentences can have great and powerful meaning. This idea is accessible for the young language learners as the story unfolds in a patient prose.  Furthermore, the book is a message of kindness and activism as friendly bugs teach the letters to work together toward greatness.

(picture book, fiction, age 4-7)