ABC Dream

Newcomer Krans’s wordless alphabet book creates an atmosphere of meditative calm. She works in black ink, devoting meticulous attention to each object, drawing hedgehog quills and jellyfish tendrils with something like scientific precision. An apple, pierced with two arrows, balances atop the letter A. An apple core below attracts ants, and in another bonus the A is argyle. B has a butterfly, a branch, and a braid of dark hair tied with a blue bow. Some letters get full spreads: for F, a fox gazes up at two large goldfish, who swim above it in a way that makes the page seem, bewitchingly, to be made of water. Ferns appear in close-up, and fireflies flicker around the edges. Working together, parents and children will find many things to name and talk about. Even those who go through the book alone may find themselves involuntarily identifying items in the drawings just for the fun of it. A list of objects (and actions) in the back will settle any questions that arise; the unicorn, it points out, is upside-down. Ages 3–7. Agent: Meg Thompson, Thompson Literary Agency. (Jan.)