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The Alphabet from A to Y With Bonus Letter Z! By Steve MartinRoz Chast ( Flying Dolphin Press )
Release Date: 2007-10-23
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $17.95
Price: $12.21
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Product Description
The acclaimed entertainer and bestselling author Steve Martin and the wildly clever New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast team up in a weird, wonderful excursion through the alphabet.
The ABCs have never had it so good. Created by two of today’s wittiest, most imaginative minds, The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z! is a sheer delight from A to Z. In twenty-six alliterative couplets, Steve Martin conjures up much more than mere apples and zebras. Instead we meet Horace the hare, whose hairdo hides hunchbacks, and Ollie the owl, who owed Owen an oboe. Roz Chast contributes the perfect visual settings for Martin’s zany two-liners. Her instantly recognizable drawings are packed with humorous touches both broad and subtle.
Each rereading—and there will be many—delivers new delights and discoveries. There, hidden behind Bad Baby Bubbleducks, is a framed picture of a beatnik holding balloons; and the letter C finds clunky Clarissa all clingy and clueless adrift in a landscape cluttered with images ranging from a curiously comfortable clown to Chuck’s Chili stand. A smart, laugh-inducing introduction to the alphabet for young children, The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z! will also enchant adults with its matchless mix of the sophisticated and the silly.
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 Garbage.
See review title. But seriously. It's awful. Children wouldn't know what a decent portion of the words he uses means. At times, it didn't even make sense to me... just incoherent sentences.
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 I really wanted to like this book
I love Steve Martin and I love the books he writes for adults. I bought this book without having read it first, and now I wish I had not. This book is definitely not for a child just learning their ABC's--the reason that I bought it (for my 2-1/2 year old). The words are too complex, and the illustrations are not what I would consider kid-friendly. By the time you find an age group that would "get" the humor in the book, and have an attention span long enough to really look at all the illustrations, these kids are well beyond wanting to read books about the alphabet, because they have already mastered it. (The illustration's captions really are complex, and use a lot words relating to the letter they correspond with, but young children will not "get" most of the humor that is intended.) I grew tired of reading all the little side-bar comments that went with the pictures after the letter "M". It just took too long to explain all the meanings of the words(to my 6 year old), and he began to lose interest. The bright spot to the book, is that the author does use unusual words for each letter, so if you are looking for something other than the standard fare like "A is for apple, and ant and airplane...", you will find it refreshing. I am not sure what age group Mr. Martin was targeting, but I think that it misses the mark at just about all age levels. I would recommend getting the book from your library first to see what kind of interest your child has in it, before investing in your own copy. I wish that I had.
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Better for adults than children
I purchased this book for my son (he's 7 months old but I started building out a library). I can't evaluate how funny he will think the book is - but having read it - I think its probably funnier for an adult who is familiar with Steve Martin as a comic. My husband and I enjoyed it!
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Funny, as expected
I bought this as a Christmas gift for my 25 year old boyfriend since he's a huge fan of Steve Martin's. And of course, I flipped through it when I got it and was surprised at just how amusing it was. (I should have been tipped off by the title, I suppose.) I don't know how this would fare with a kid, they might miss a lot of the details that make it amusing to an adult (sometimes for the better), but it was worth it.
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Caution
My 2 year old receieved this book for Christmas. I think it is cute for adults, it is no appropriate for children. I would use caution and acutally see the book prior to buying it. It has been put away in our house.
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Addiction
