Discovering Nature's Alphabet

When Melville wrote about nature's "cunning alphabet," he meant it metaphorically: humans, he argued, see in nature only the lessons they seek. But husband-and-wife team Castella and Boyl have discovered a literal alphabet in the natural world, and they present its examples in 92 lovely full-color photographs. The images span the grand (set against a backdrop of the Grand Canyon, twin branches of a juniper tree form a Y) and the minute (the vein of a yucca leaf curls into a Q), the ancient (the O of petrified wood) and the brand new (the curving G of a mangrove seedling). Leaves, corals, branches and shoots form most of the letters, though there are icicles shaped like an M, a gecko curled like a P and an inlay of quartz that looks like a U. The text is rudimentary and encouraging—the sort of thing that adults should ignore unless they are reading to rapt children: "Nature holds a secret world filled with hidden letters. The best way to find them is to slow down and explore." Though it's sweet and simple, this is also the sort of book that might spur its readers, young or not, off the couch and into the great wide readable world. (May)