Book review: 'ABCs' by Charley Harper

I was quite the book worm growing up and there were times I'd rather stay inside, deeply absorbed in a story, than go outside and play with friends. In retrospect, and I'm sure my mother agrees, this might not be considered a very social habit but it made me incredibly happy. I wouldn't say that I was the most timid kind of kid but my shyness increased with the years and reached a boiling hot high during my puberty (probably seasoned with a good number of hormones). While interactions with people my age, especially those that are categorized as small-talk (still makes me shiver), was a difficult chapter of my everyday life, between the pages of a book I would always find comfort. I was most certainly part of the Harry Potter hype but when this wonderful series hit the stores my nose had already been firmly attached to the inside of a book for several years.
 
My boyfriend grew up quite differently. He spent most days of his small-town childhood running around outside and novels, short stories and co had only become of interest for him in his mid-twenties. In any case, you can probably understand that introducing Samuel to reading in general and the wonderful world that can only be found between the pages of a book is very important to us for different reasons.
The sheer mass of books perfectly fitted to children at Samuel's age is enormous. So finding your way through the endless piles of cardboard and paper goodness can be challenging. I'd like to use my tiny blog space to introduce you to children's books on a regular basis and where better to start than with the ABCs!

There's no doubt in my mind that you already have the one or other alphabet themed book lying around - we do, too. The one I'd like to show you today though, is quite special in my humble opinion. I might be at a slight disadvantage not having had the chance to grow up with Charlie Harper's beautiful illustrations. Nevertheless, I've been in love with them since they were introduced to me a few years back. When I stumbled over a comparably recently published board book titled 'ABCs' by Charley Harper I was hooked.

The pages are thick enough for cute chubby baby fingers to flip through and the vibrant colors are certainly stimulating enough to keep a toddler with a short attention span interested for a while.

Every page features a different letter of the alphabet with a fitting animal name, to make memorizing easier, on the left side. On the right page you'll find an illustration of the afore mentioned animal.

There are a number of things I love about this book. Firstly, the shown animals are  not limited to your usual elephant, lion, monkey business. There are a number of unexpected protagonists like the crab that you can see in the picture above, the hen (for 'h', who would have thought) or the iguana! Aside from that, and I have to admit that I'm not entirely sure whether this derives from a lack of fitting illustrations in the available body of Charley Harper's work or a is due to a consious decisions made by the publishers, there are some pages that have an entirely different approach. I don't want to spoil the chance for you to discover the book yourself, so I won't tell you more but prepare for some fun surprises!

The colors are what I find especially lovely as every page's color matches the matching illustrations's hue. It's super interesting to observe which color and animal Samuel is drawn to the most. Contrary to what you might expect, his favourite page by far features the brown-toned yak and the orange-blue vultures - both not excactly the cuddliest kinds of creatures!

The book spotlights many (if not all?) periods of Charley Harper's creative process and therefore offers a great overview about how his style, and that of illustrators in general, evolves over time. The featured images are taken from very different kinds of contexts and I had a lot of fun looking up the original illustrations and thereby discovering the huge spectrum of Harper's work.

If you live in the UK you can pick this beauty up at Smallprint, a wonderful family-run online shop. For those from other parts of the world, please consider supporting a different small book store instead of a certain huge online store we all know.