From Albatross to Zoo: An Alphabet Book in Five Languages

This alphabet book--a debut for author and illustrator alike--features French, Italian, German and Spanish as well as English names for an array of animals, from the zoological garden-variety lion to that abecedarian savior, the quetzal. A particular style of hand lettering distinguishes each language for easy identification, while the illustrations tell a story of a bird struggling through an alphabetically arranged nightmare. Hassled at every turn of the page by the likes of a chameleon who tries to catch the bird with his tongue and a herd of angry, stampeding elephants, the bird finds a nest of eggs midway through this unpleasant expedition, and struggles to save even one from the onslaught of animals O to Z. The attractive design skillfully blends illustrations and type to create many gamesome touches, such as a dolphin diving through the letter D and the letter R getting stuck in a reindeer's antlers. But the relentlessly menacing tone of the illustrations and the hapless bird's consistently panicked expression offer a very narrow brand of humor. Nascent linguists, however, will appreciate the similarities among the five languagages and the graphic reminder of their common linguistic roots. Ages 3-6. (Sept.)